Flight of the Falcon
by 21ShootingStars
Summary: After GoF Harry runs away and becomes emancipated. He decides to train so that he'll be able to beat Voldemort.- currently on hiatus due to computer difficulties and a lack of interest on my part. it might be back eventually, but who knows?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer- I own absolutely nothing; it all belongs to the fabulous J.K. Rowling, I am simply making her people do what I want them to.

Summary- After the third task Harry gets sent back to the Dursleys, again. Eventually he decides that it is beyond ridiculous to sit around waiting for Dumbledore to tell him what to do and decides to have a little fun. An outing to Diagon Alley changes a lot of his beliefs and makes him see what's been happening to him for the last 14 years a lot more clearly. Harry takes actions to make his life into something that he controls.  
Harry won't be dark, but he won't be the same old Harry either. This obviously starts right after book 4 and will be AU! It will loosely follow book 5's first few chapters, but eventually shouldn't be anything like it.

Author's note- I am writing this for my enjoyment because I had an idea that amused me and decided to go for it. As of the current time I have no beta and don't plan to really be all that much of a stickler for any rules. My spelling is generally very good so I don't expect too many problems there, but I'm not really much of a research person so there may be a few things that don't fit in with the way they should be in the wizarding world. If I make any crazy mistakes feel free to tell me about them. And there is not going to be any fixed POV for this story, its mostly going to be third person or from Harry's or a narrator's view, but no guarantees. Anyway, to get to the point: If you've got a problem with mistakes don't read this; there's plenty more for you to read and no reason to waste your time.

…

On with the story-

Chapter 1

The Dursley home, Number 4 Privet Drive.

Harry Potter is not a normal boy for many reasons. First, he's a wizard. Second, he is constantly in life threatening situations thanks to the fact that he survived a killing curse from Lord Voldemort and Voldemort refuses to give up on killing him. Lastly, three weeks ago Harry saw Lord Voldemort return to power.

At the current moment Harry is, once again, wishing he could be anywhere other than his bedroom. It's sometime in the early morning and Harry's relatives are all sound asleep, and snoring louder than a rabid dog.

Thinking of dogs suddenly gives Harry an idea of something he can do to get out of Privet Drive. He comes up with a plan and moves over to his desk to start writing a letter to the one person he really feels like talking to.

_Dear Padfoot,_

_I can't stand another week with the Dursleys .If I stay here I'll either go crazy or they'll probably kill me. I am going to London and will be spending the rest of my summer at the Leaky Cauldron. Nothing anyone says is going to stop me. I am only telling you because I really want to see you and I hope you'll meet me there to spend the rest of my holiday with me.  
Whenever we leave the Leaky Cauldron you can be Padfoot and as only a handful of people know about that you should be safe. Please consider it. If you decide to come I'll be getting there today around 11 in the morning._

_ Harry._

_._

With that done he sent the letter and began packing. Like he told Sirius, there was no way he was staying with his relatives. He was tired of being Dudley's punching bag or the family house elf and he was going to waste no time getting out of Little Whinging.

By the time he finished packing up his room it was around seven in the morning. The Dursleys will probably be sleeping until around 10.

Harry could think of absolutely nothing else to do for now and decided that he might as well read. He reached into his trunk at random and grabbed the first book his hand found.

First year potions textbook, not exactly what Harry considered interesting, but he figured it really couldn't hurt to do a little reading on his worst subject (next to divination, of course). And going back to the beginning might be a good idea that could maybe help him understand basic concepts, not likely but possible.

Two and a half hours, and half a potions textbook, later Harry decided it was time to start his escape. He went down to the kitchen with his full trunk, grabbed some fruit he could eat on the way, and walked out the door.

Once he was out of the house, however, Harry realized there was no way he could walk all the way to London. Especially with his trunk to carry there was just no way he'd make it in time to meet Sirius at 11.

'Well, I could either fly on my firebolt or take the knight bus' he thought. Looking at his trunk he decided. 'Knight bus it is.'

Pulling out his wand and raising his hand Harry called the bus that would take him to freedom.

BANG! And there stood the violently purple, triple decker Knight Bus.

" 'Ello my name is Stan Shunpike and I will be your conductor this mornin'- Oy! You's Harry Potter!"

Great. Why did he have to recognize me? Even better question, Why did he just shout my name to the whole bus? Now I'll have to deal with all these idiots staring at me all the way to London.

"Yeah, that's me. I'm going to the Leaky Cauldron. And I'll pay extra if you'll drop me off before anyone else; I'm kinda in a rush."

That was a lie, but it should get me out of here quicker. I can't deal with all the stupid staring much longer.

"Alrighty then, five galleons to skip to the head of the line and go to the leaky cauldron."

Harry quickly grabbed his money bag out of his trunk and handed over the gold then he went to sit down as the bus took off for the city.

Ten minutes later the bus had pulled up in front of the Leaky Cauldron and Harry was dragging his trunk into the bar.

"Hey Tom. I'll need a room for the rest of the summer; one with an attached private parlor I think." That way there should be plenty of room for both me and Sirius all summer if he shows up.

"Of course, Mr. Potter. You can have room 21 it's just upstairs."

"Just let me run over to Gringotts and I'll pay you when I come back." I said while already walking out to the little wall that opened to reveal Diagon Alley.

Once I was heard his answer I shut the door to the bar and looked to the seemingly boring wall. It was only then that I realized I was still carrying my trunk. Setting it down I took advantage of the fact that the Ministry can't track underage magic when someone is in Diagon Alley, thanks to all the magic that's going on all over the place, and shrunk my trunk to put it in my pocket. Finally, I tapped the correct brick and watched as the wall turned into an archway.

Once I was standing in line to talk to a goblin about going down to my vault I took the chance to look around. I didn't see a single person I recognized. But I guess no Hogwarts students really needed to be here since the school supplies list hasn't come out, yet.

Finally I was first in line and talking to a goblin. I handed over my key and said "I need to visit vault 687, please."

"Ah, yes. The Potter trust vault. I'll get Griphook to take you down immediately. GRIPHOOK!"

"Hang on, Trust vault?" I asked, confused. I thought that was my family vault. What's going on?

"Yes, Mr. Potter. Your trust vault. If you have a question please ask Griphook on the way down. I have a line to take care of. Thank you and have a nice day."

I looked around and noticed that the goblin was correct; there was quite the line behind me. 'Okay, I can just ask on the way to my vault what he was talking about.'

I followed Griphook to a cart and got in quietly. I was still confused. A couple minutes later I decided I would need Griphook to explain and asked him about the trust vault.

"When you were born your parents set up a trust vault that you can withdraw from until you come of age and have access to the family vaults which hold the rest of the Potter fortune, along with deeds, books, and artifacts.

"Gringotts has sent you all this information along with a full list of everything in your vaults many times in your quarterly statements. Now if you're done with the foolish questions, we have arrived at your vault."

With that said the goblin hopped out of the cart to wait for me to give him my key so that he could open the vault. While I jumped out of the cart I was, once again, confused. What quarterly statements? That was all I could really think, so of course that's what I asked as I handed over my key.

"Really Mr. Potter! Someone might think you're a little thick headed if you keep up with all this clueless nonsense. The quarterly statements I spoke of are the statements that Gringotts sends you every three months with the details of your accounts."

"But I never got one of those before!" I defended.

By this point I had gotten enough gold to pay for my room and meals this summer and we were on our way back to the main building in the cart.

"What? Of course you did Mr. Potter. As I am the goblin who sends out such notices I can assure you that yours was sent to you." Responded the goblin in a voice that said he thought that that was the end of the discussion.

"But I never got one! I don't have any idea what's going on."

"If that's the case Mr. Potter then you will need to set up a meeting with the bank manager and he will be able to figure out your problem as well as answer any questions you have. If you want I can take you to arrange a meeting now." Said the goblin as they exited the tunnels and entered the main bank.

"Thanks. Do you know if I could meet with him tomorrow?" I asked.

"Okay. I know that he is free at 1:30. I will make the appointment. Do not be late Mr. Potter."

I nodded my understanding and headed back to the Leaky Cauldron. About halfway there I checked my watch to see how long I had before Sirius might arrive. What I saw sent me running full speed ahead to get there quickly; I was late, it's already 11:17. I had wasted more time than I thought in Gringotts.

Once I was back in the Leaky Cauldron the scene that met my eyes made me burst out laughing.

There was a giant black dog running through the bar being chased by Tom all over the place. As I watched the dog jumped onto a long table and ran down the length of the table knocking over most everything on the tabletop.

"Out you stupid animal, Get out!" Tom was yelling after the dog while he chased it.

Finally I took pity on the both of them and tried to end the commotion.

"Tom wait! Sit Snuffles!" I almost lost my self control and started laughing again as Sirius sat down without stopping running and slid the rest of the way down the table and fell off the end.

"I'm sorry Tom. He's my dog; I guess he went a little crazy looking for me since I wasn't here. He's staying with me. I'll make sure Snuffles behaves the rest of the summer." I told him while I sent a look at Sirius that was a mix between a glare and amusement.

Tom looked shocked that I could possibly have such a terribly behaved animal, but consented to allow him to stay once I showed him that I had gone to the bank and gotten the money to pay for my room this summer.

"Thanks Tom, Come on Snuffles."

I led him upstairs to room 21 and unlocked the door with the key tom had given me before opening it and gesturing my godfather into the room before entering.

Once in the room I said "Don't transform yet." In a quiet voice before turning to the door and placing privacy wards, that I had learned studying for the Triwizard Tournament, on the door to keep away unwanted eavesdroppers.

"It's okay now." I said as I turned around.

A second later I saw my godfather appear in place of the giant dog and was then grabbed in a hug. After a second Sirius let me go and stepped back to get a good look at me.

"You don't look so good." He said, commenting on the fact that I was all bruised from dealing with Dudley and pale from no sleep for the past few days.

"I'm fine. You look a lot better than last time I saw you."

"Yeah, well I guess the same could be said for you too. You looked like crap after that task last time I saw you."

I laughed and said "I guess you're right."

For the next several hours we just sat and talked about everything from the marauders' school days to what I had done so far this summer.

Eventually I remembered my odd Gringotts visit and asked Sirius about it. His response wasn't what I was looking for.

"It sounds like someone is messing with your account, which means it might not be safe for you to go alone to that meeting. So I'm going with you tomorrow." He saw my face and could tell I was going to argue and continued "There's no reason to argue, the goblins know I'm innocent and they couldn't care less about what wizards do, so they won't care I'm there. I'll go in as Padfoot, it'll be fine."

He seemed convinced so I didn't bother arguing. But at that moment a disturbing thought hit me.

"Sirius, you didn't tell Dumbledore where I am did you? Because you and I both know he'll come and get me and send me back to those crazy people."

"Relax, I'm not that stupid." He pretended to look hurt that I thought him that stupid.

"You know you are, so I'm allowed o be concerned."

"Okay. Well I say it's time to go to sleep. You look dead on your feet and I know I'm beat from all the excitement today."

"Okay just make sure I'm up in time to make my meeting." I mumbled while I was trying to stay awake, I really was tired considering I hadn't had a good night's sleep in about three weeks.

.

.

~The Next Morning. June 30. ~

"Get up! It's time to go if you want to eat before your meeting. I let you sleep as long as I could."

I could kinda hear the noises in my room, but I ignored them as best I could. That was until I felt something soft hit my face and then felt a sudden chill.

I hopped out of bed in an instant and saw Sirius armed with a second pillow and my wand. I looked above my head and saw the source of the chill; a bucket, that until about thirty seconds ago must have held ice water.

"I'm up! I'm up! I'm going take a shower, be out in a minute" I then went o my trunk, grabbed some clean clothes and went to take a shower.

Ten minutes later I walked out of the bathroom dressed in my muggle clothes and went to get Sirius so we could leave to find food and go to the bank.

I was not expecting Sirius's next words." What _are_ you wearing?" He sounded faintly disgusted.

I looked at my clothes and realized why instantly. My only muggle clothes were Dudley's old rags. And I couldn't wear my wizarding clothes because I only have Hogwarts robes and they are far too short.

"Nothing, these are the only things I have. Let's go." I was slightly embarrassed and just wanted to avoid the subject. I tried to leave, but found my way blocked by Sirius.

"No way. Here, give me your wand and I can fix this mess. I'll transfigure those into acceptable clothes, but it'll only last today."

I was grateful for the help and immediately handed over my wand. Then I realized I had another question." What about your wand? Where's it?"

"Azkaban." He said simply.

"Oh." I guess that makes sense. The ministry took it when they arrested him. "Well, we'll just have to get you a new one later today. That takes priority over any other plans we may have had."

"Alright! I haven't had a chance to get one yet. I can't wait! But for now let's get going to Gringotts."

"Breakfast first. But I think we should have ice cream for breakfast today, that's what I'm I the mood for today. Let's go."

Twenty minutes and two ice cream cones later, Sirius had eaten his in dog form, they were being led by Griphook to meet with Gornuk, the bank manager.

"Good afternoon Mr. Potter. My name is Gornuk; I hear you haven't been receiving your bank statements and you also have some questions concerning your account."

"Yes sir. I didn't even know until yesterday that I was supposed to get bank statements or that I had more than my trust vault; I didn't even know the trust vault was a trust vault. But before I say anything else I wanted to ask you if I can put a privacy spell on your office. I don't like eavesdroppers."

Gornuk looked a little offended at the idea that I thought someone could eavesdrop on his office, but I guess he must have experience with eccentric customers so he told me to go ahead and do whatever spells I felt necessary.

I quickly put up my privacy ward, which keeps out wizards and witches while allowing goblins entry, and got ready to reveal Sirius.

"One more thing, sir, I would like to introduce you to my financial adviser." I said gesturing to Padfoot.

At Gornuk's confused face I gestured to Sirius to hurry up and transform. Once he did Gornuk barely even looked worried. He merely turned to me and asked"Mr. Potter are you aware that man is a wanted criminal?"

I replied" Yes, but I m also aware that he is innocent."

"Ok, well, I don't really care who you hang around with. If we can get back to our business, there is a simple reason you don't personally receive your statements. Your guardian requested they receive them instead of bothering you with financial matters. I personally consider that rubbish, but your guardian requested it so it was done."

"My guardian? There's no way the Dursleys knew about my Gringotts account; if they did they would've had all the gold before I could blink!"

"Not your muggle family, your magical guardian: Albus Dumbledore."

"Wait. What? I should be his magical guardian. Not Dumbledore. How is Dumbledore Harry's guardian?" Sirius seemed extremely confused.

"I believe once you were in prison Mr. Dumbledore went to the ministry and got them to allow him to be Mr. Potter's guardian. Now, back to your other concerns, would you like to know what all you should have seen in your statements?"

"Yes please, actually I think I'd like to see everything this bank has that has anything to do with me if that's possible."

"Of course." Gornuk snapped his fingers and a folder appeared in front of Harry.

At that minute another goblin knocked on the side door and entered, handed Gornuk a note, and left.

Gornuk read his note the rose."If you'll excuse me there's a problem outside, you're welcome to stay here and look over that." he said, indicating the papers.

"Ok, thanks."

Once he was gone Sirius and I started looking through the folder. There were copies of dozens of bank statements, copies of Harry's parents' wills, and a current inventory of the contents of Harry's vaults. I looked over the inventory and was shocked at how much money I truly have.' I have to be one of the richest people in England.' I thought.

Sirius must have noticed my expression and looked at my inventory to find out what had me so shocked.

"Damn Harry! You've got more money than the entire Black family combined with the Malfoys! That's crazy."

At this point Harry had come back to earth and took a look at a few other documents in the folder. The one that really caught his eye was his parents' will. The part Harry found most interesting was where it listed who should be his guardian if his parents weren't able to take him.

The first on the list was obviously Sirius. Next was Remus Lupin. After Lupin was the shocker: The Longbottoms, Neville's family.

The most shocking thing of all was underneath the people who should take Harry; the list of people who should never gain guardianship of him. There were only two on that list: The Dursley Family and anyone who is currently employed at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

By the time Harry finished reading he was mad. How did this happen? His parents had made it very clear who could NOT have Harry under their control and Harry ended up with both Dursleys and a Hogwarts employee as his guardians. That's just not right!

Harry hadn't noticed Gornuk enter the room but when he looked up to give the document to Sirius he Finally noticed the goblin.

"How did this happen? My parents' wishes are just being obviously disregarded!"I demanded answers.

"I believe Professor Dumbledore had something to do with it." Gornuk answered calmly.

"Well I have to do something about it. This is just wrong!"

"I have an easy solution if you'd like to hear it. You could be emancipated. Gringotts can authorize emancipation under certain circumstances. The disregarding of your parents will makes it so we can authorize you to be emancipated. You would be considered a legal adult, you could have access to your family vaults, perform magic outside of school (not that that rule seems to stop you), and you wouldn't have to return to your relatives over holidays."

I was a little surprised and didn't quite believe my ears. I turned to Sirius to find out what he thought and noticed his grin. That's what made it real. I was free!

"Absolutely! What do I have to do?"

"Just sign. I took the liberty of filling out the papers before I returned here a moment ago." He gestured to a paper on his desk that had a quill resting on top of it.

I immediately took the quill and signed after reading through the document once. I didn't need time to think about it.

"Congratulations Mr. Potter. There are now a few more pieces of business we must talk about before you can leave." He picked up a small wooden box and handed it to me." As you are now the head of the House of Potter you need your Head of House ring. That ring will both display your new status and act as a portkey to take you wherever you consider home, if you consider multiple places home all you need to do is think of the one you wish to be taken to." I immediately thought of where I consider home: Hogwarts, the Burrow, and now the Leaky Cauldron."All you have to do to activate it is twist it around on your finger once and then tap the stone 3 times."

I opened the box to find a large gold ring with a large circular ruby in the center. In the center of the ruby was what I could only assume was the potter crest; a majestic stag in the center with the words "Sempre Fidel, Sempre Valent, Sempre és cert" written in gold underneath him.

"Wow" I said as I ran my finger over the ring before pitting it onto my right middle finger.

"Good. Now here is the key to open your family vaults. All contents of your trust vault have been moved into your family vault. All other keys to any Potter vault have just been destroyed, no matter where they are. Currently the goblin in charge of your investments is Griphook, do you have any objections?" He waited for me to shake my head 'no' before continuing. "Now that you are an adult Dumbledore is no longer your guardian and we will be sending your statements to you. Also, now that you have access to the main vaults the statements will become monthly instead of quarterly.

"That's all I have to say really. Congratulations again. You just became Lord Potter, The richest man in both wizard and muggle Europe."

He chuckled as both Sirius and Harry's jaws dropped.

"Any questions?"

'Only about a million!' I thought.

"Just a few. Mostly, is there any way I can avoid having to come here every time I want to buy something big? Or whenever I need muggle money?"

"You asked just in time. When I left the room earlier, that was to make the final authorization on our new muggle debit cards. If you want you could have the very first of them. About being able to avoid always having to come for gold, there is another solution. We have a special moneybag for our high priority clients. The way it works is simple. You fold it up and put it in your wallet, whenever you want wizarding money you pull it out and think of how much you need. The bag has an expansion charm on it so that no matter how much you need it can fit in the bag. If you don't feel like pulling piles of coins out of the bag, and wish to just give the full bag to whomever you are paying, then the next time you open your wallet a new moneybag, exactly like the first will be in there."

'Oh. Wow. That actually sounds like pretty good ideas.' I thought.

"Sounds great. Could I get both today? I think I'll be doing some shopping once I leave." If I'm filthy rich I might as well get new clothes and some new stuff, after we get Sirius a new wand of course.

"If that's what you want. Please excuse me for a moment while I take care of the arrangements." And he left us alone in the office again.

"This is so cool!" Was the very first thing I could think to say.

"Well yeah! It's not every day you escape controlling guardians and come into giant fortunes, is it? Ooh! We should do something to celebrate freedom! Any ideas?"

Uh… I don't know. What do I want to do? Wait! I've got the perfect idea!

"Erm….one, but I don't know what you'll think…it's-" I was about to tell Sirius my brilliant idea when Gornuk came back, and there's no way he's hearing about it.

"Here you go. Do you know how to work a muggle debit card?" I nodded and he continued."Good, saves a lot of trouble of explaining. Well, here you go." He handed me my new card and bag and I thanked him, and stuffed them I my pocket.

Sirius transformed and we left the office and bank.

…..

Author's note-

On the ring the saying ("Sempre Fidel, Sempre Valent, Sempre és cert") says "Always Faithful, Always Brave, Always True"


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer-Not mine. It all belongs to J.

…...

Harry led Sirius back to the Leaky cauldron and straight up to room 21. Once they were both inside he warded the door then went to the couch in the parlor. He sat and stared at his ring for a few minutes before Sirius got him to snap out of it.

"Aren't you excited? If it were me I'd be jumping for joy right now. You're free!"

"Yeah, you're right. And Padfoot, you seem to be jumping for joy anyway." Sirius was just about bouncing in his chair; he seemed to be shaking from excitement.

"Can you blame me? I just saw you be freed!"

"Chill! I'm happy, I'm great. Mostly I needed to come back to the room to get something from my trunk. I'm gonna need it later for my freedom celebration. And I won't tell you what it is; it's going to be a surprise!"

I went to my trunk and dug around for a minute until I found what I was looking for. I can't wait to see Sirius' face when he realizes what I want to do to mark my freedom. It's gonna be great!

I slipped my surprise in my pocket and went back to the parlor to find Snuffles waiting by the door ready to go.

"I see you're anxious to get that wand." I commented and laughed when his tail wagged so fast he seemed to be shaking."Well, on to Ollivander's!"

We went into Ollivander's and waited until the wand maker showed up. The second I saw him I declared:"Mr. Ollivander, I've got an important friend who's meeting me here for a new wand and his life depends on his privacy being respected. I'm going to need you to swear an oath of secrecy that you won't tell anyone about my friend being here, no matter who he turns out to be. If you can't do that I'll contact him and we'll go to a different shop, but we know the best come from here so it was our first choice."

"Mr. Potter, of course I will swear an oath not to report Mr. Black as I know he's innocent."

"What! How did you do that?" I asked in shock, not really expecting an answer.

"I can see auras and your friend over there has a light enough aura that there was no way he did all he was convicted of. And that dog's aura matches Mr. Black's from the last time I saw him."

Oh. Well that actually makes sense, I guess.

"Ok Mr. Black. Right arm out please." And with that Sirius appeared in place of Snuffles and Mr. Ollivander's crazy tape measure got to work, while Ollivander himself flitted around the store snatching wands off the shelves.

Harry wasn't even concerned that he never got his oath, because he was sure Ollivander could've called for the Aurors to come and get Sirius a million times, but he never did.

After half an hour Sirius finally found the right wand. Harry jumped up out of his chair and rushed over to Ollivander and asked how much.

"Harry, what are you doing? I'm gonna buy my own wand, you idiot!"

But harry was stubborn. "Nope. Everything either of us gets all summer is my treat. I just found out how much money I have. Nothing we buy is even going to make much of a dent. My bank account has about 100 zeros Sirius. I am buying everything this summer, no use fighting it. So how much Mr. Ollivander?"

"10 galleons. And please make sure he keeps that one safe."

"Will do. Here and thanks." I said handing over the gold.

Then I turned to Sirius and asked "Do you know any glamour charms? I don't particularly feel like going on a shopping spree with a dog that won't be allowed in most stores."

"Yeah, sure. Let's see….. Yep. That should do it." I watched in awe as Sirius became completely unrecognizable. With a few nonverbal charms Sirius' gray eyes and long, black hair turned into hazel eyes and medium length, sandy hair. Sirius' face was not recognizable at all in the man who now stood in front of Harry. The man also looked 15 years younger than Sirius; he looked barely over Harry's age. The only two similarities between the two men were that they both had that same glint in their eyes that said, quite clearly, that this was a fun-loving troublemaker and that Sirius stayed the same height and build.

Harry thought it was a good thing Sirius was staying his own size because Harry had decided earlier that if he was getting an entire new wardrobe, then so was Sirius.

"Good work, I can hardly find anything remotely close to your appearance here."

"Ok, enough talking, let's go I want to know what you have planned for your freedom celebration." Sirius declared as he literally dragged harry by the arm from the store. "Ah..to see the outside world from six foot two again. It definitely beats being two feet tall all the time."

"You won't be finding out what I have planned yet. We are going get me something to wear this summer." I then dragged him out of Diagon Alley into muggle London. It was lucky that the Leaky Cauldron happened to be in the center of one of the busiest shopping parts of town I had ever imagined. Only 4 blocks to the east there were outlet malls so big your feet started hurting when you looked at them. Five blocks northwest of the Leaky Cauldron was a huge shopping mall packed to the brim with some of the best stores out there.

Sirius looked at Harry and decided that the boy probably had no idea where he was going and headed them toward the outlet malls. "This way. I'll make sure you get clothes that won't make you look like an idiot."

I tried to look offended, but I probably failed considering I was actually really thankful for the help. I never went clothes shopping for anything other than Hogwarts robes before."Gee, Thanks for that." I said. We headed off for what was probably going to be an interesting day.

.

.

.

'Remind me to NEVER let Sirius take charge of a shopping trip ever again! Or tell him I wanted an entirely new wardrobe.' I thought as I finally made it back to room 21 and collapsed on the bed.

In the last four days I had been led all over London as Sirius took it upon himself to make sure I had the perfect wardrobe. I now have everything from skinny jeans to khakis to black dressy suits to plan white tee shirts to brilliant pink dress shirts to black leather jackets and green silk boxers! I think if you name any male clothing category and then name a color and style I can probably find you something fitting your description in my new wardrobe. I even have new wizarding world clothes, but Sirius had been much more reasonable with those; after all harry didn't have much need for anything other than black robes for school, but Sirius had shown him a shop that had clothes that even Harry could tell were higher quality than what he was used to wearing to school. He helped Harry pick out some very dignified looking robes that had a special charm woven into the fabric- they would grow with Harry, at least a few inches. They had also gotten Harry a new cloak, Harry was still using his one from first year and it was far too small.

I don't even have space for all the clothes. I have filled BOTH closets in our rooms, the coat closet in the parlor, and the chest of drawers in my room. The rest of my bags are piled on one side of our parlor. They take up almost half the room. And Sirius refuses to let me shrink the clothes, saying it ruins their quality to keep them tiny.

The only thing that made him listen to me that my wardrobe was complete was when I told him I would just go and do my freedom celebrating without him while he kept shopping if that's what he wanted. He had never given up questioning what I was going to do for my celebrating no matter how many times I told him it was a surprise.

I think it's finally time to tell him what I'm going to mark the freedom with.

"Sirius!" I called;"I've decided to tell you what I'm doing."

"Really? It's about time! What is it?"

"Calm down. I have to tell you since I need you to tell me where to go for it. Ok…You sure you want to know?" I asked teasingly, I knew not knowing was killing him.

"YES! Now tell me if you want my advice."

"Hang on I've decided I'm actually going to make it a real surprise. Tom can tell me where to go. You can stay here with the clothes for company. I should be back in about 4 hours. Bye now." I checked my pocket to make sure I had everything I needed and walked out the door.

"Hey Tom, can you help me with something?"

…

Three and a half hours later I was walking into the Leaky Cauldron, grinning in self satisfaction. I couldn't believe I had just done that. Ron and Hermione will freak when they see it. Of course, I'm not sure what Sirius will think, but he'll probably be cool with it. He better be, because it is most definitely permanent.

Knock Knock Knock! "Padfoot let me in. I've got something to show you."

The door opened and I walked in to see the now-familiar face Sirius had turned himself into, he decided it would be easier to stay this way for the summer than run around as Snuffles.

"Where's this surprise? Why couldn't you just take me with you?"

"I couldn't take you with me because I thought this way would be more fun. And I'll show you the surprise when I come back; I think I'll put on pajamas first." I watched Sirius growing more and more anxious every second and added "you'll see it the second I come back. Promise."

About two minutes later I walked out of my room and almost laughed as Sirius' jaw dropped.

"Well what do you think?" I asked holding my arms out to the sides

At first I thought he might never speak again, but he finally managed to get out "There's a dragon tattooed on your chest! And it's Moving!"

"Well, technically, it's a Hungarian Horntail and it's on my left pec muscle, but close enough, yes Sirius. And of course it's moving. I found a tattoo artist who I was happy with their work then I showed them the little model of the Horntail, from the First Task, which I drew out of the pouch. Once they had the tattoo finished, and if I may say so I think it looks remarkably like that beast, I used a revealing spell to find out how the model was enchanted to copy the real one. Once I knew what spell they had used on the model I got the artist to use the same one on me. Now whatever that Horntail I faced does the one on me does too. And since dragons live thousands of years it'll always move. Look! It even breathes fire when the real on does! Isn't it cool?"

"Well yeah it's cool! I'm only disappointed that you beat me; you get your tattoo even younger than me. I didn't get a tattoo 'til I turned 16 and ran away from my family. Come to think of it I got mine as my freedom celebration too. Funny how we both got our tattoos as our freedom celebrations. Mine managed to make my family even madder at me than they were. They were the biggest bunch of Slytherins ever. I was the first Gryffindor in my family history. Imagine the look on those snake's faces when they saw my red and gold lion on my shoulder-blade."

By this point I was laughing again; this time from relief. Sirius wasn't mad in the slightest; he was only upset I get mine at an earlier age than he got his tattoo.

"I didn't even know you had a tattoo, so I can assure you I didn't know I was starting up a tradition. But I think I'm going to sleep; I'm worn out."

"Alright, see you tomorrow"

….

~July 13, Two weeks after Harry arrived in Diagon Alley. ~

.

"Harry! Come see, quick!" Sirius called. He sounded worried.

"What Sirius?" I asked while I ran over to see him sitting in the parlor. He was staring at a piece of parchment that he had clenched tightly in his hand.

"Dumbledore just sent me this." He indicated the letter he was holding. "It says the place they were using for headquarters for the Order was just attacked and he wants to know if they can move headquarters into my house. I'm gonna let him use Grimmauld Place for headquarters, but he might expect me to be there since it's my house."

Sirius had told Harry all about the Order of the Phoenix a week ago and Harry had wanted to join immediately. There was only one thing that stopped Harry from rushing to find Dumbledore and demand he be allowed to join: Sirius had pointed out Dumbledore didn't know he was in Diagon Alley and would send him back to the Dursleys, emancipated or not. And Harry had no intentions of returning to Privet Drive.

"Oh. Can he really force you to stay at Headquarters?"

"He would definitely try. But I have a question for you. If he does make me stay at Headquarters, would you stay here or would you go there with me until you go to Hogwarts?"

Harry wasn't sure. If he went with Sirius he would probably be stuck in the house the rest of the summer and he would probably be kept in the dark on anything the Order or Voldemort were up to. If he stayed in Diagon Alley he would be without Sirius and probably not be able to enjoy his summer knowing Sirius was trapped in a house he hates.

"I don't know. Neither option is very appealing, if I go I don't know how I'll react to Dumbledore know that I know about his manipulating my life. If I stay, you'll be all alone in that place all summer. I need to think about it."

"Alright pup, I get it. I'm gonna go ahead and go see Dumbledore to show him where my house is so that he can get to setting the Order up there. I'll make sure I'm back in a few hours. He'll have to put up one hell of a fight if he's planning to trap me in that house." With that he walked out the door and left to go find Dumbledore.

Harry knew he had to do something to keep himself busy while Sirius was gone. He couldn't stand to sit in his room and just think about what he would do. He decided he would just wander around Diagon Alley and check out some of the lesser known shops that he hadn't ever had a chance to visit.

Once he was in the Alley Harry started checking out a few shops he had overlooked in his other visits.

One that caught his eye was a shop selling trunks. He thought of his own trunk that was looking a little beat up after four years of Hogwarts. Harry could vaguely remember visiting this shop on his first day in the wizarding world, when he was shopping for his first-year supplies with Hagrid. He decided it couldn't hurt to look at a replacement trunk.

Walking in he heard one of those annoying bells on the door that told shopkeepers when someone entered their store. Just a few second later a man appeared. He seemed to be around 70 years old and had long brown hair, tied back in a ponytail, and he seemed like someone who would be very easy to get along with.

"Can I help you young man?"

"Yes sir, I'm looking for something to replace my old trunk." I really had no ideas what to ask for.

He chuckled a little before answering "I've got plenty of items with those requirements." He gestured to the rather large room full to the brim of plenty of trunks."You'll have to be a bit more specific."

I felt silly, of course I need to be more specific, but I really have no idea. "I really don't know what I want. All I know is that I need something with plenty of space that is very durable and will hold up."

"Okay, let me give you a few ideas what all you can look for in a trunk. There are a few different materials the outside can be made of. Are you looking for something with a fabric, metal, wood, or dragonhide exterior?"

Oh. I guess that's a reasonable thing to know when looking for a trunk. I knew immediately which one I wanted. "Dragonhide, definitely; Hungarian Horntail if that's possible." I knew it was silly, but I couldn't really get past the fact that I had survived facing one of those and wanted to show it off in a subtle way.

"Alright. Now, do you want any special charms on it?" he asked while leading me to a section of the shop with dragonhide trunks.

"Like what?"

"I could add charms to make it feather-light, only open for you, or make it shrink so tiny that you can carry it on a necklace or just in a pocket. Things like that, or really anything you can think of."

"OK, I like all of those options. Can you make it so that the inside is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside?"

But even as Harry asked the last question, a memory popped into his head. A memory of a trunk with several different locks that all open to a different trunk; a trunk that Alastor Moody spent the last school year in.

"Hang on. I've had an idea of something else. Can you make a trunk with several different compartments, one with a bunch of different locks that all open to reveal a different interior?"

The shopkeeper got an excited gleam in his eyes for a reason Harry couldn't possibly understand.  
"Can I make one? I invented those nifty little things. I've spent the last 30 years perfecting them. I can do so much with those trunks you wouldn't believe it."

"Like what?"

"I love it when people ask about these trunks." The man was already leading Harry to another room in the shop that Harry could see was full of the exact trunks he was asking about. "I can do almost anything with these trunks. I can put entire apartments in these things. These trunks can have anything you want."

"Anything?" I asked, I had an idea and I was curious to see if it was possible. I was already making a plan; a plan that could make my life extremely different.

"Anything. Absolutely anything!" The man was obviously positive his trunks would be able to do whatever Harry could think of.

"If you're sure. Ok, this is what I want."

….

Author's note-

Ah-ha! A mini cliffie! I know it's not a very suspenseful, but there's no way y'all can figure out Harry's plan until the next chapter now!

I should have the next chapter really soon. I'll start working immediately.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer-Not mine. All belongs to J..

Author's Note- I have changed my mind from what I said before the first chapter. I know I said that y'all can tell me if there are stupid problems in my writing, but I've decided I'd rather find those mistakes for myself. I have only just now realized how terribly annoying those reviews can be, especially when they remind you of your pain-in-the-arse ex English-Language Arts teacher.

If something seriously bothers you and you notice it being repeated in multiple chapters then I would love for you to tell me. Just please don't make your review sound like I'm an idiot three year old (no offence to any three year olds out there).

That said, on with the story…

…...

~That same day, late night, The Leaky Cauldron. ~

.

Harry was woken up around 11:30 that night by someone banging o the door and calling for him to let them in. After a few moments he realized it was Sirius and went to open the door.

"Hey. How was your meeting with Dumbledore?" He asked.

"It was great. I told him he could have my house for the Order, but I didn't want to spend any time there other than for meetings. He tried to convince me I would be safer there, but after a little arguing I managed to get out of being stuck there. We don't have to leave the Alley all summer!" He was obviously excited about not having to be at Grimmauld place the rest of his life.

"That's awesome. I came up with my own solution, too. I realized that Dumbledore probably wouldn't tell me anything that's going on with this war or really help me learn to fight Voldemort. I decided I'd do something to prepare myself. I want you to help me train and I've got the perfect way to do it."

"How exactly do you plan to train to kill Voldemort in just the six weeks before you go back to school? I promise it will take much longer than that for you to learn all you'll need. Of course I'll help, but it won't happen all this summer." Sirius was obviously thinking very hard and was obviously confused.

"That's the best part about my whole plan; it can be done this summer. I found a way while I was in Diagon Alley."

"Okay…What exactly is this plan? I can't figure it out."

"I was in a trunk shop when it came to me. The salesperson was telling me how he can put an entire apartment into a trunk and it made me wonder what it would be like to live in a trunk, and then I thought 'if there could be an apartment in a trunk, could there be a place for someone to learn to duel or learn all the other important magical things'? So I bought a trunk that's got all the important things you need to learn: a library, a dueling room, potions lab, Gym, living space, anything we'll need. We can use all that space for us to train in."

"I don't get it; if we need space I have a house. And I still don't see how you think we can train in just six weeks."

"Oh! I forgot about the most important part. I first thought about a time-turner and asked the owner of the shop if it would work in the trunk and he told me about something even better. He knows a charm, he said he learned it around twenty years ago, and when you cast it on a room time in that room works differently than it does in the rest of the world. If we use that charm on the trunk, every two months in the trunk is only one day in the rest of the world. Every two weeks for everyone else would be an entire year for us! Think about all the training we could get done in all that time. What do you think about my plan now?"

"I like the idea, but if I spend the next six weeks in that trunk someone will get suspicious about me never turning up at Order meetings, and won't your friends worry about you never answering their owls? And how are we going to explain it when we come back from this summer seven years older than we were when it started?"

Harry honestly hadn't thought owls about that and took a few minutes to come up with a way for them to keep up with everything going on in the real world. He already knew a way around aging seven years this summer.

"What if we just come out of the trunk every month or so, that way it will be every twelve hours out here and we can check for messages from anyone we need to talk to. And there's another thing this charm on the trunk does, it slows down aging. When you're in a place with this charm you only age a third of how much you should, so even if we stay in the trunk seven years we'll only age two and a half years. It might be a little hard to explain, but there's no way I'll change that much in two years."

"Okay, sounds like a good plan, but before you can learn any advanced magic you need to learn most of what you'd be learning at Hogwarts the next three years. There's no way someone who only knows fourth year level stuff can do all the advanced stuff you're suggesting. I know plenty of stuff to teach you that I learned from Auror training, all kinds of powerful and lesser known magi branches, but it all requires more training than you've got right know. Would you let me teach you everything you'd be learning at school?"

"Are you able to teach me all that? I could just pick up some books if you can't."

"I'm offended. I had great grades at school, thank you very much! I got O's in every subject I took at NEWT level!"

Harry could tell Sirius wasn't really offended, so he didn't bother with apologies.

"Well then, I guess I wouldn't mind you having you teach me the boring stuff before we do any real training."

"Good. Now, when do we get this impressive trunk?"

Harry grinned and said "I've already got it. The shopkeeper finished it for me a few hours ago. And it comes fully stocked with everything we'll need. The Library, Potions Lab, and Gym all have some special enchantments on them that make anything we need just appear there. We can start whenever you're ready."

"Let's sleep before we go in. In the morning we'll pack and start training. How long will we have in there if we start tomorrow?"

"Seven years. I think that'll be plenty of time, don't you?"

"Definitely. Well, let's sleep and then we can deal with any preparations before we start." Sirius said through a yawn.

They headed to their beds and fell straight to sleep.

….

~ The next day, late morning. ~

"Wow…I know you said it would be a lot bigger inside, but I was not expecting this. It is huge!"

Harry has finally shown Sirius into the trunk for the first time and Sirius is impressed.

"I know, when I first came in here yesterday I was shocked. I couldn't wait to show you everything. It's pretty awesome in all the rooms down here. This is probably one of the largest, but the others are really cool too." When they entered the trunk the first room Harry brought Sirius to was the dueling room; it has stone walls and floors, it's about the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and it has practice dummies with varying skill levels to help you practice dueling.

"If you follow me I'll show you the rest of the place. It's not very hard to find your way around, but it'll be easier for me to show you since I already know where I'm going." Harry told Sirius.

"Okay."

In the dueling room there door to a hallway. Down the all there were six doors leading to the different parts of the trunk: Harry's apartment, Sirius' apartment, the library, the potions lab, a classroom, and the gym. Every room in trunk opened into the hall so it was really simple to get around the entire place.

The apartments were identical and both were comfortable. They weren't huge, but they were definitely spacious. Each had a bedroom, kitchen, small living room, and bathroom. They had carpet flooring in the bedrooms and living rooms and dark wood flooring everywhere else and the walls were all a dull gold.

The library was even bigger than the one at Hogwarts and was fully stocked with more books than Harry could ever imagine reading. It also had a few comfortable chairs for reading in along with two large desks. The best thing about this library was that if there was something it didn't already have that you want or need to read it will just appear on your desk.

Harry's least favorite room, the potions lab, was a little bigger than the average Hogwarts classroom. It had a supply closet that didn't seem very impressive, but it had the same enchantment as the library and if there was an ingredient you needed it would appear, no matter how rare the ingredient was.

The classroom wasn't anything special. It was the size of any classroom at Hogwarts, except with fewer desks. There was a single table in the middle of the room for them to sit at and a few bookshelves along the walls. It's only interesting quality was that it also made anything you want appear for you. It was boring, but it was a classroom and it didn't really need to be interesting.

The gym was the last room with the enchantment to make items appear when wanted and it also had a special enchantment that made it possible for the gym to get bigger so that it could fit whatever you think up. It was just as large as the dueling room, maybe even a little bigger. It had room to learn different ways of fighting, muggle style, like boxing and martial arts. There was also a swimming pool, a running track, and all the exercise and weight lifting machines you can imagine. Sirius' favorite part was the rock climbing wall. It wasn't like a muggle rock wall at all. The rock wall was basically a Cliffside with obstacles. It was actual rock, but it had the occasional problem to get in the way of you ever reaching the top. The obstacles were things like earthquakes, avalanches, waterfalls, and lightning storms.

Another thing about the trunk that should be impossible, like the immense size, was that every room, other than the potions lab, had glass ceilings which let in plenty of sunlight. Sunlight was definitely nice, even if it is artificial, but it was also a little odd to know that there was sunlight in a trunk.

…

After the tour and unpacking the guys were really anxious to get started with their training.

Sirius started teaching Harry his fifth year work once they were settled in and Harry found that it was a lot easier to understand everything he was learning without twenty other students distracting him and the teacher. He also liked Sirius' teaching method. Sirius didn't approve of homework and didn't make Harry take too many notes. He believed it was more important that you could do something than understand how you did it.

They went all the way through the entire subject before starting a new one. They went through the subjects in order of how difficult Harry found them. Starting with the easiest and ending with the hardest. The order was fairly simple: Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration, Astronomy, History of Magic, and Potions.

Harry quickly realized that every subject, even Potions, was fairly simple when you had a teacher all to yourself and that teacher was actually nice to you. By the end of eighteen months in the trunk they had, amazingly, gone through everything Harry needed to know for fifth, sixth, and seventh year at Hogwarts and Harry could do anything from First through Seventh year perfectly. They were both impressed with what could happen without distractions in school. Harry even found that he actually liked both Transfiguration and Potions a lot more than he ever thought possible and they became his favorite subjects.

When Harry asked what they would do now that they had finally finished Harry's schooling Sirius told him about everything the ministry teaches it's Aurors, which was the career both Sirius and James had before the Potters were killed and Sirius arrested. There were a lot of odd things he had never heard of, but after Sirius explained about what they were Harry could definitely see their uses. There were even a few things that weren't magic, but muggle.

The things Sirius was planning for him to learn were: Occlumency, Legilimency, Advanced levels of all his school subjects (other than History and Astronomy) which included learning to do them nonverbally, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, The Animagus Transformation, Wandless Magic, Dueling, Apparition, and Martial Arts. The Animagus Transformation wasn't something the Aurors learned, but it was another thing Sirius thought would be useful.

Harry was most excited about Occlumency, Legilimency, Wandless Magic, and The Animagus Transformation, but Sirius didn't think he was quite ready to learn much of anything yet. He said there was one thing Harry needed to do before he could really succeed in all the more advanced magic. Sirius was convinced Harry needed more physical strength to make his magic stronger. Sirius was having Harry work-out in the gym all the time so that he would be less tiny and scrawny and more muscled and powerful. He was also teaching Harry Martial Arts and Dueling since both of those were things he needed to learn that would help him learn control and keep him active at the same time.

After around six months of just doing this Sirius decided to let Harry learn some new stuff.

They worked on everything two subjects at a time, just slightly different from when Harry was learning all his school subjects. There were only a few big changes in the way they did things this time. This time they weren't working on the same subject seven days a week until Harry mastered it. This time they worked Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday on the subject that Harry was trying to master and then spent Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday on reviewing everything they had already done in Dueling, Martial Arts, and working out in the Gym.

The other change was the work they were doing on Harry's Animagus Transformation and Wandless Magic. They were both things Harry was really excited about, but they take a long time and plenty of patience to succeed in. The most important part of becoming an animagus was meditating and finding the animal you are most like inside. They decided that because it would take so long to learn that Harry would work on it every day for a few hours every night before going to sleep. There was also another plus to this daily meditating; it would eventually help Harry with his Occlumency. Wandless Magic was something Harry worked on every day as well. He started all the way back at first year magic and it seemed like he had some sort of natural talent for it because, to Harry, it was one of the easiest things he had ever done. Very soon he was able to do every spell he knew without a wand and every time he learned something new from Sirius he practiced until he was able to do it without a wand. The sad part about being so adept at Wandless Magic is that once back at Hogwarts he wouldn't be able to show off, it would be too suspicious.

The first things Sirius taught Harry were Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. Harry wasn't very fond of Arithmancy, but he thought Ancient Runes was interesting enough. Sirius didn't force Harry to do anything more advanced than Seventh Year work in either subject, but it took an entire year of work for Harry to finish with just those two subjects.

After Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, Sirius taught Harry a few advanced things from his school subjects. They mostly focused on Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, but did a little work on Transfiguration and Charms. They didn't even bother with History of Magic or Astronomy. They took about two months each on DADA and Potions and around six weeks each for Transfiguration and Charms.

The next thing they worked on was Apparition and Harry was pleased to say that he caught on very quickly. In just a little over a month he was apparating perfectly.

The next thing Harry learned was Occlumency and Legilimency. There were a few things he learned while working on either subject. One thing he learned was when dealing with Legilimency you sometimes learn way more about someone's past than you really want to know; especially after a year of constantly trying to read the same person's mind. It took around a year for Harry to master Legilimency and around fifteen months for him to finally finish with Occlumency.

Of course not all the time in the trunk was spent on Harry's training. Sirius refused to let the days of the Marauders die and was also training him to have a little more fun in life. They had a nearly constant war of pranks and jokes.

Harry wasn't very creative with his pranks and one of his best involved turning Sirius' hair lime green. This backfired on Harry when Sirius decided he wouldn't be the only one with messed up hair and one morning Harry woke up with a few brilliantly purple streaks in his hair. But this, once again, backfired and Harry decided he quite liked having interesting hair and decided to keep it.

The biggest surprise of the entire seven years in the trunk came just after Harry finished Legilimency and before he finished Occlumency. It was around midnight one Tuesday and Sirius was half asleep when he was suddenly woken by a loud noise outside his door. It was an odd sort of noise and Sirius decided it would be a good idea to investigate. Upon opening his door he was hit in the face with something white and slightly fluffy. Once he recovered from the shock he realized what was in front of him. It was a large bird, and Sirius wasn't sure, but he thought it was a falcon of some kind. He stretched out his arm and the falcon landed on it. He looked over the bird, trying to figure out where it came from, and suddenly noticed that there was a tiny black lightning bolt on the top of the, otherwise pure white, bird's head.

Realizing what was happening he asked "Harry?" in a shocked voice.

The only answer was an excited "fweee!" from the falcon.

He then asked "Can you transform back?" because he remembered that when he first succeeded in his animagus transformation he couldn't transform back to human for three days before James finally found a spell in the library that forces the transformation back to human.

The falcon responded by shaking his head 'no'.

"Okay. I'll help."

He then set the falcon on the floor and performed the spell James had found in the Library at Hogwarts all those years ago. "Revelar la seva veritable jo" and, suddenly, Harry was standing in front of Sirius.

"Great Job! You finally got it! And I can see how you make a good bird. Do you know exactly what kind you are?"

"Not yet. I was planning to go to the Library to find a book on bird species."

"Oh. Well I think you're some sort of Falcon, if that helps, but I'm not sure. But this is great! We need to celebrate." Sirius had said.

The next morning Harry went to the library and discovered that his animagus form was a Gyrfalcon.

…..

The next time Sirius had an Order meeting, during which Harry was just wandering around Diagon Alley, Sirius figured out what they could do to celebrate. It was something he was already planning, but he decided it could just happen a little earlier than planned.

When they were back in the trunk Sirius led Harry to the Gym and over to the running track.

"Alright, today on the way back from the meeting I got you a present to honor your achievement, so close your eyes and don't look until I tell you to." Harry was curious about what it was, but he did what Sirius said and waited.

A few minutes later Sirius told him to open his eyes and when he did he saw the last thing he was expecting.

Sirius was standing next to a large, black motorcycle. Upon closer inspection Harry discovered that it was a Kawasaki Ninja 650R Sport. In Harry's opinion the best part of the bike was on the right side. It was an exact likeness of Harry in his Animagus form, except in his talons this version of Harry was holding an olive branch.

"Whoa. This is cool, thank you! But where am I supposed to keep it, and I don't know how to ride it and how did you get this painting to look so much like me?"

"Hang on! One thing at a time, first, you're welcome. It can stay in the trunk there's plenty of room for it down here, and when you bring it into the rest of the world just shrink it to get it out of the trunk. I can teach you how to ride the bike, I used to have one; I think Hagrid still has it. And the painting of your animagus on the side was easy. Remember when I got a picture of you while you were a falcon? I know a spell that can turn a picture into a painting and put it on any solid surface. The olive branch is a symbol of peace and, as far as I know, your main goal in life right now is to get rid of Voldemort and that would bring peace to the world." Sirius explained.

"Oh, well, thanks again! Will you teach me how to drive it soon?" Harry was clearly excited about his new toy and anxious to get started.

"Sure, and once I'm convinced you know how to drive correctly I'll get you a license."

"Wait, how are you going to get me a license? To get a muggle drivers license you have to take a drivers course and pass a test. It's a whole process, there's not enough time left in the real summer for it." Harry told Sirius.

Sirius laughed."So naïve, don't you know about forgery?"

"Oh."

And three weeks later Harry was presented with an excellently made license.

…..

Sirius had one more surprise for Harry after he was done with teaching him to drive his bike.

"I've been thinking and I don't think there's really much else I can teach you. I think we're pretty much done in this trunk and if we get out of the trunk soon you can still have a whole twelve days of your summer."

"Really? You think we're done? Wow; we've finished with a two years extra."

It had only been five years in the trunk and when they went in they had enough time for seven years.

"Yep, there's nothing else I can really help you with."

"Oh. So, what do you think we should do the rest of the summer?" Harry asked.

"I've got one idea, but I don't think you'll like it."

"And what might that be?" Harry was getting a little wary, he knows Sirius well enough to know that if Sirius admitted Harry wouldn't like one of his ideas, then Harry would consider it torture.

"Well, you have grown quite a bit in the last five years here and your seriously impressive wardrobe doesn't really fit anymore." Sirius was grinning; he knows how much Harry hates clothes shopping.

"Urgh! You're right I don't like the idea." Harry didn't want to admit that the idea was actually a good one, even if it would be true; in the last few years he had grown from a scrawny, short, and pale little person of only five foot eight, to a very well muscled, nicely tanned, six foot three. "If we I have to go through that again then we're only spending a maximum of four days on clothes shopping. I know how overboard it's possible for you to go. The rest of my summer we are doing what I want!"

"Fine, that sounds like a challenge to me."

….

Authors Note- Translation of the spell Sirius used on Harry-"revelar la seva veritable jo"- it means "reveal your true self".


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer- I don't own it. Everything belongs to J.K. Rowling

On with chapter four….

Sirius was right; Harry did not find four days of collecting a new wardrobe pleasant, no matter how necessary Sirius was adamant it may be.

By the time Sirius was finished, Harry once again had perfectly fitting clothing in both the muggle and magical worlds and all of his old, ill-fitting, clothes were vanished with a wave of Sirius' wand.

When there was only one week left of summer break Harry finally got his Hogwarts letter and he spent two days getting all his school supplies.

With five days left Harry was fully packed and ready to go to Hogwarts. For once, he couldn't really think of much else to do in Diagon Alley.

With four days left of the summer, while Sirius was at an Order meeting Harry decided it might be pleasant to go to the beach for the first time; the Dursleys never even considered bringing him on their vacations and always left him with Mrs. Figg. So he looked on a map, picked which beach to go to, dug his swimsuit (something Sirius had gotten him to buy) out of his trunk along with a towel, got ready and apparated straight from his room at the Leaky Cauldron for his first day at the beach.

Once at the beach he realized that it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be; it was still hot and Harry didn't like the feel of sand between his toes. Still, he thought it might be fun to go swimming. After he had taken off his t-shirt he realized that the muggles might be a little confused by his moving tattoo of the dragon. He covered it with a simple Glamour charm to hide it and tried to enjoy the beach, but he soon decided he really didn't like the beach at all and decided to go home.

He apparated home and took a shower, While getting dressed he finally realized he had never uncovered his tattoo.

While casting another charm to cancel the first Glamour charm he got an idea for something to do the rest of the day.

….

Many hours later, around 2:30 AM the next morning, Harry was back at the Leaky Cauldron when Sirius finally got back from the meeting.

Sirius noticed that there was something different with Harry because for the first time in days he didn't look bored. He was actually grinning.

"Guess what I did today."

"Er… I don't know. What?" Sirius was too tired after that ridiculously long Order meeting to deal with guessing games.

"Look!" Harry said while rolling up his right shirt sleeve.

Sirius looked and noticed that Harry had a new tattoo. This one wasn't moving, but it was just as lifelike and impressive. It was the same picture that was on Harry's Motorcycle. It was a life-size version of Harry in his animagus form; a bright white Gyrfalcon with a black lightning bolt on his head. The falcon's wings were stretched out wide and its left wing extended onto the right side of Harry's chest and the right wing extended onto Harry's back. Clutched in its talons was a single olive branch signifying peace.

"Oh. Nice." Sirius sounded thoroughly bored.

Harry realized that Sirius wasn't even concerned that he had gotten a second tattoo and wondered, not for the first time, how he would have turned out if he had grown up with Sirius instead of the Dursleys. Harry was positive that if he had lived with Sirius his entire life he would have probably turned out as some sort of wild-child, and he was almost glad that he hadn't grown up with his godfather.

"Thanks, but why do I get the feeling that you couldn't care less?"

"I'm just tired, that was a long meeting."

"Oh. Anything interesting happening that I should know about?"

"Dumbledore has finally figured out that you aren't at Privet Drive. He sent some Order people to pick you up from your family; when they got there and couldn't find you he finally realized you weren't there."

Harry laughed and then he realized something." What am I supposed to tell everyone about where I disappeared to? Or about how I'll be doing so much better in school this year?"

"I don't know, I'll think of some cover story and tell you later."

"Thanks."

.

Two days before Harry would be on the Hogwarts Express, Sirius told him what he had thought of for a cover story.

"I thought up a few different things, but most of them were a bit too crazy and outlandish. I decided it would be easiest to just have a simple half-truth. Just tell everyone who asks that you hired a private tutor and you were staying with them this summer. It's close enough to the truth that you won't forget it and tell different people different stories."

"Okay, I like it. It's really simple, but what if someone asks who it was I got to be my tutor? I assume I shouldn't tell people that it was Sirius Black, mass murdering, escaped convict."

"You know I'm innocent! And you can use the name of an old muggle friend I had before Azkaban, Dante Grey. He was always fun to be around, so I don't think he'd mind my borrowing his name. You can tell people he was homeschooled and that's why Hogwarts has no record of him, if anyone asks."

"Okay, it's an easy enough name to remember."

.

The morning of September 1st was extremely different from the last time Harry went back to school. The last few years he had gone back with the Weasley family, and it was always chaotic. This time Harry was already packed, so there was no last-minute scramble to finish packing, and he was already in London, so there was no reason to rush to catch the train.

At 9:30 AM he left the Leaky Cauldron. Harry knew that he could have waited a lot later and apparated straight to the station, but he wanted to take one last ride on his bike before school. And so at 9:30 he shrunk his trunk, put it in his pocket, and hopped on his bike to go to Kings Cross Station.

Traffic was pretty bad and it took him 45 minutes to get to the station. He parked in a deserted alley, where no one would see him, and shrunk his bike. He then took his trunk out of his pocket and made it full size so that he could put his bike in it. Once his bike was packed, and his trunk shrunk again to fit in his pocket, Harry left his deserted alleyway and went to load the Hogwarts Express.

He was fairly early, the train doesn't leave until 11, so he had no trouble finding an empty compartment to sit in and wait for his friends to arrive. After a few minutes Harry got bored of looking out the window and decided to read a book he had found in Flourish and Blotts the other day. It was a book about how to ward your home to keep it safe from attack or unwanted visitors.

Harry, who had actually become a bookworm in the last few years, was so intent on his reading that he never noticed the train moving and was lost in his own little world until someone spoke to him.

"May I sit in here? Everywhere else is mostly full." Asked a dreamy voice, and Harry was so shocked by the sudden noise that he jumped.

Harry looked up from his book and saw a blonde girl who was already in her Hogwarts uniform. He was sure that he didn't know her, but she didn't look like a Slytherin so he agreed that she could sit with him. "Sure. I'm Harry, by the way." He added the last bit hoping that she would offer her name, because he really couldn't remember and thought it would be a little rude to ask.

"Thanks, I'm Luna Lovegood." She said while sitting down on the bench across from Harry. "Did you know that this train is full of Gnargles?"

"Umm…No, I didn't know that." Harry wasn't sure what he really thought of Luna, she seemed a little odd, but nice and definitely interesting.

"Yes, well, most people don't."

"Ok."

And then there was no more conversation and Harry went back to his book, and Luna pulled out a magazine to read.

But after a little while Harry's mind began to wander. Mostly he was thinking _Where are my friends, if Luna found me this easily shouldn't they have been able to?_ And he was feeling slightly hurt that they didn't seem concerned about him; so he decided that if they weren't concerned about finding him, he wouldn't worry about finding them.

MEANWHILE….

"I wonder where Harry is. It's strange that he wasn't on the train when we got here, I mean we were so late that we nearly missed it; if he's on the train we should have seen him while we looked for a compartment." Said Hermione.

"I don't know, maybe Dumbledore made some special arrangements for him to get to school in a more protected way than this train." Said Ron, unconcerned with his best friends' disappearing act.

"Maybe you're right." Said Hermione in a voice that suggested she didn't really think he was right at all.

BACK TO HARRY…

A few hours later Harry was trying to decide whether to wear his uniform or not. He didn't really want to follow Dumbledore's rules, so he didn't want to wear the uniform. But he didn't want to have people stare any more than usual, so he did want to wear the uniform. Eventually he decided to just wear the robes over his muggle clothing,

He pulled his trunk out of his pocket and enlarged it so that he could get his robes. Once he was finished with his trunk he just put it on the luggage rack instead of shrinking it again; he could easily lift it no matter what all was inside because of a simple Feather-Light charm that made it nearly weightless.

Once he had pulled his robes on over his clothes he heard Luna speak again.

"You know, I don't think that you exactly fit the dress code." She said, referring to the light pink, long sleeved, button down shirt clearly visible from the top of his robes and the ends of the robe sleeves, and his lack of Gryffindor tie. And his hair, which still had the purple streaks all over; When Sirius had put them there he used a spell that made his hair grow in that shade of purple so that they would stay until someone removed them.

Really, the only parts of Harry that fit the dress code/ uniform at Hogwarts were the black robes and his black dragonhide boots (because Hogwarts doesn't have any rules about shoes, otherwise he would be sure to break that rule too).

"Yeah, I know. I don't really care what Dumbledore thinks, though. So it doesn't really matter." Harry was still pissed at the Headmaster for messing up his parents will.

"Okay." And she went back to her magazine.

Harry now knew that he liked Luna, even if she was a little odd. He knew that neither Ron nor Hermione would have let it drop that easily; they would have demanded an explanation. Harry found it easy to be around Luna because she was mostly off in her own little world.

Just then the train arrived at Hogsmeade station.

While unloading the train Harry noticed Luna having a little trouble with carrying her trunk so, in an effort to be helpful, he offered to carry it for her.

"Thanks, but I can get it." She said while still struggling to carry the trunk.

"Nonsense! I got it." He said. And then he scooped her trunk up in one arm and put it on his shoulder to carry it out, without even waiting for a response, and grabbed his in the other arm.

Luna looked at him like he'd just grown a third head, but Harry just grinned; he was proud of his new strength and was glad people were going to see it.

"Let's go." He said while walking out of their compartment. She followed him over to the carriages.

On the way to the castle Luna explained to Harry about the thestrals that he had seen for the first time. He wasn't sure about believing her and decided he'd make sure to look up thestrals in the library.

While they entered the school people were staring at Harry more than ever before, but the only sign that he noticed them was the large smile on his face. He had gotten over his problem with attention last school year after the Triwizard Tournament fiasco. And he really didn't care if all these people were staring at him for any reason.

The people were staring for quite a few reasons: He was the Boy Who Lived, the Daily Prophet had been calling him crazy for the last three months, he looked incredibly different from last year, he was not following the dress code at all hardly, he was carrying two trunks with more ease than most people managed to carry their owl cages with, and he was walking side by side with Looney Lovegood.

Harry just led Luna through the crowd and deposited their luggage at the foot of the stairs with everyone else's and then he walked her all the way over to the Ravenclaw table before heading to the Gryffindor table.

Even more people stared at him for that.

MEANWHILE…..

Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny noticed all the students staring in one direction and knew it could only be one person they were staring at: Harry.

They made their way through the crowd and stopped when they saw why everyone was staring.

"That isn't Harry, is it?" Asked Ron.

"Ron, I think it is Harry."

"Bloody hell! What did he _do_ this summer?"

"I don't know, let's go talk to him."

BACK TO HARRY…..

Harry was sitting at the Gryffindor table when his friends finally got to him.

"Hey Harry!" They all said at once, almost like it was practiced, while they sat at the spots surrounding him.

"Hello." He replied in a dull voice, he wasn't sure if he was mad that they didn't bother trying to find him on the train or not.

"Why weren't you on the train?" Ron asked, getting straight into the questions Harry's friends were all dying to ask.

"What? Of course I was on the train, Ronald. I'm here, aren't I? I wouldn't be here if I didn't get here on the train with everyone else." Harry was both confused and annoyed at Ron's stupid questions.

"We didn't see you, were you late getting to the station?"

"Ron, wait. I think he might have been there and we just didn't recognize him."Hermione said.

"Didn't recognize me? What are you guys talking about? And, Ron, I was on the train over half an hour before it left."

"Harry, are you thick? You look nothing like you did last time we saw you! We didn't recognize you because of whatever you did this summer. And what _did_ you do this summer?" Ron asked.

"Do I really look that different? And I had a very good summer, but I didn't do anything exciting." Harry lied.

"Yeah you look different! You're about a head taller, you're not scrawny, you're not pale, and what the hell did you do that to your hair for?"

"What's wrong with my hair?"

"Well, first off it's not all messy; it's longer and it's lying flat, but that part looks good. But I think what Ron was asking about was the purple." Ginny answered.

"Oh, that! I didn't do that, it was a joke that someone pulled on me, but I kinda liked it so I'm claiming that it was a gift, just to bother the person who did it."

"How is it a gift? And who did that to you?"

"It's a gift because someone else did it and I didn't ask for it nor was it expected. And you don't need to know who did it. Is the interrogation over?" Harry was getting a little tired of Ron's questions.

"One more. What on earth happened to your uniform?"

"I didn't want to wear it, it's in my trunk." And it's buried underneath about a million other clothes.

"But-"

"Shush," Harry interrupted "you said that was the last question. And here're the first years."

They watched the sorting in silence. When the sorting was over they enjoyed a great feast, and Harry took the time to question his friends about their summers.

Neville's summer highlight involved getting a new plant.

Hermione went to France. Ron and Ginny both said they didn't do much other than schoolwork and hanging out around the burrow. Harry knew they were all lying; Sirius had told him that Hermione and the Weasley family were all staying at Headquarters of the Order.

After the feast came Dumbledore's speech. Dumbledore's yearly speech had a few interesting, or funny, moments this year. The most noticeable was when the new DADA teacher interrupted; Harry was positive she would be a terrible teacher. Most people didn't really notice the other point in the speech that Harry thought was fun; at the end of his speech, right before sending them off to bed, Dumbledore added a new line to his speech: "And I believe all students should review the dress code tonight before bed. Good Night!"

Harry found that part interesting for two reasons: because he had noticed Dumbledore looking in the direction of the Gryffindor table as he said it and knew it was directed at him and because it only strengthened his resolve to _not _wear the proper uniform.

Once in the common room Ron and Hermione told Harry they had something to tell him so they went to a quiet corner of the room to talk.

"We weren't entirely honest about what we did this summer earlier." Hermione started.

"Why not?"

"Well, we couldn't tell you where a bunch of other people could hear. You see we were really at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix; it's a secret society Dumbledore's founded to fight You-Know-Who." Ron explained

"Okay; and why couldn't Neville and the other Gryffindors know this?"

"Because it's a _secret_ society. Dumbledore doesn't want everyone to know about it."

"Oh."

They stayed in the common room and talked for about an hour before going to sleep. They would have stayed up later, but Hermione insisted that they get plenty of sleep before their first day of classes.

.

The next morning Harry woke up earlier than his dorm-mates so that he would have time to take an early morning run.

He put on some clothes he could run in easily, a black, sleeveless shirt and mesh shorts, and went out to the grounds. There was only sign of how early it was: he didn't pass a single person on his way out of the castle.

Harry jogged a lap around the lake and, just for the fun of it, transformed into his animagus form and flew around the Quidditch pitch a few times.

Once he was back in the castle, he soon realized that he had been outside a lot longer than he thought and that he only had an hour before time for class and all of Gryffindor would be awake by now.

He ran back to Gryffindor, passing many other early risers on his way.

After he arrived back in his dorm room he realized why people were looking at him funny when he passed them: he hadn't covered up his tattoo of the Gyrfalcon and it was clearly visible on his arm.

He grabbed his clothes and went to take a shower in the fifth year boy's bathroom attached to their dorm room.

Harry had taken extra care to pick his clothing that morning. He made sure to pick clothes that were so bright that they couldn't be ignored, just to see what his teachers would say about it. Today under his robes everyone would see a brilliant purple muscle shirt and, though no one would see them, he also wore a pair of dark blue jeans. Over his robes, instead of the average black cloak, he wore a purple cloak. Both the shirt and cloak were the exact same shade of purple as his hair.

Once he was dressed he went back into his dorm room to find his boots. The night before he had carelessly tossed them back into the closet portion of his trunk and he was now having difficulties finding them. Finally he saw them, but they were a bit out of reach; thanks to the fact that the closet portion of his trunk was absolutely huge inside because of the expansion charm on it.

Unfortunately he had to actually stick most of himself into the trunk to get to them. He was pretty much buried up to his waist in the trunk before he could reach his boots.

Even more unfortunately, Ron spotted him with half of his body in a trunk that was far too small for him to be able to fit in.

"What the heck? Harry, how were you doing that?"

"What?"

"You were practically buried in that trunk!"

"Oh. I expanded the inside of it." Harry said simply.

"You expanded it? But that's Seventh Year Transfiguration, you couldn't do that."

"Really? Then how do you explain it?" Harry asked in a voice that made Ron think he was missing something important. Which he was, he didn't know about anything Harry had learned this summer.

And with that Harry walked out of the dorm, and out of the tower, and made his way down to breakfast leaving behind a very confused Ron.

As expected Harry's outfit attracted quite a bit of attention, but if he noticed he didn't let anyone know it. He ate his breakfast in peace until McGonagall came around with the schedules. He didn't even notice her until she said something to him.

"Potter, what are you wearing that for?"

"No reason, Professor."

"Well, then I must insist you go upstairs and change."

"No ma'am, I won't do it."

Harry could hardly stop himself from laughing at the expression on McGonagall's face.

"Then you have a detention tonight Potter. And here." She said while tapping him on the shoulder with her wand. Harry was not amused when his clothes were instantly transfigured into the school uniform.

"Thanks, Professor."He said, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm.

"You're welcome. Now here's your schedule." She handed him a piece of paper and started to walk away.

"Wait! I wanted to change something this year. Can I drop Divination and join Arithmancy and Ancient Runes?"

She gave him that puzzled look that he was beginning to expect from people.

"You cannot just join either of those subjects without any prior knowledge of them; you would be two years behind your classmates." She moved to walk away, but Harry stopped her again.

"Please Professor. I'll be perfectly fine in either class; I've got plenty of prior knowledge of each class."

"What are you talking about? You haven't taken either subject before."

"I have Professor! I took them this summer; I hired a tutor so that I could catch up in them."

"Really? That's rather unlike you. Very well, I shall let you try both Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, but if either of your new Professors tells me that you are behind you will be back in Divination very quickly."

"Thank you, Professor." Harry said.

She took his schedule back, tapped it with her wand and handed it back; Now without Divination, but with two new subjects.

A few minutes later Ron found Harry and asked to see his schedule.

"Perfect, we've got all day together today, but it's bad luck, mate, we have double Potions with the Slytherins first class." Ron said after checking Harry's schedule for Mondays.

"I don't think it'll be so bad this year."

"Are you crazy? The greasy git is probably gonna be twice as terrible now that it's our O.W.L year!"

"I'm sure he will be; I just meant that I have no intentions of taking all his crap this year, so it won't be so bad in his class."

"What do you mean?" Ron asked, looking at Harry with that ridiculous puzzled expression.

"You'll see."Harry answered, smirking.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer- I don't own it. It all belongs to J.

Chapter Five…

"Harry?" Ron sounded worried.

"Yes?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Where would the fun be if I told you that? How about I'll tell you the plan one step at a time? The first step is to go to Potions, so let's go." Harry said while leaving the Great Hall.

About ten minutes later they were only one hallway away from the Potions classroom in the dungeons when Harry pulled Ron to the side of the hall.

"This is step two." Harry pulled his wand out and tapped himself on the left shoulder. "Much better, don't you think, Ron?" Harry asked; showing Ron that his clothing had been un-transfigured from the uniform McGonagall made, back to Harry's original purple clothes.

"What the… How did you do that? You shouldn't have known how to do that! We haven't learned that yet! You're giving me a headache, confusing me like this, Harry." Harry chuckled when he noticed that the puzzled expression was back again.

"Come on, we don't want to be late." Harry avoided answering Ron's questions by leading him to the crowd outside the door to the Potions classroom.

They joined their classmates just in time; not even a single minute after they got to the door they heard Professor Snape shout for the class to enter.

Once everyone was in the room Snape started taking the attendance. He looked up to check that every person was in the room, whether they answered when he called or not. When he got to Harry's name, and looked to make sure he was actually in the room, Snape finally noticed Harry's outfit.

He looked annoyed for a second, and then he walked, silently, over to Harry's desk. "I don't believe purple is allowed in the dress code, Potter. So that will be fifty points from Gryffindor." And Snape pulled out his wand pointed it first at Harry's head then at his chest and got rid of the purple streaks, and turned his clothing back into a uniform; exactly like McGonagall had done.

Then he just turned away from Harry's desk and walked slowly back to the front of the classroom while calling out more names.

Once Snape's back was turned, Harry turned to Ron. He held up three fingers and whispered, so only Ron would hear, "Step three." Harry then pointed at Snape, using a fun bit of wandless magic Sirius had taught him, and Ron watched in amazement (along with the rest of the class, who were all staring at the intimidating Professor while waiting for their names to be called) as Snape's long, greasy, black hair suddenly turned bright red and gold all over; Gryffindor colors.

"Professor," Harry called over the sudden outbreak of giggling in the room, and when Snape turned around he continued "I don't believe Gryffindor colors are part of the Slytherin uniform." Harry's voice didn't suggest anything about what was going on, it was said in the tone someone would use while discussing the weather.

Snape looked briefly confused, and after he quickly looked over his billowing black robes the slightly confused face turned into the puzzled expression Harry had seen so many times today.

Harry could tell the exact moment when realization hit Snape. His eyes widened slightly in disbelief and he slowly reached a hand up to his hair. He pulled a lock of hair into his eyes, so that he could see it properly.

He then turned his eyes back to Harry, who was grinning like crazy. By now the entire class had stopped giggling and, the Gryffindor half, almost looked worried that Snape just might kill Harry; the Slytherin half looked hopeful for the same outcome.

"POTTER! GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM! AND THE HEADMASTER SHALL BE HEARING ABOUT THIS!"

"Really? Thank you! I certainly take no pleasure from being stuck in this hellhole every week." Harry informed Snape, both his expression and tone suggested that he had just been given the best birthday present ever.

"Oh, one more thing Professor."

"What do you want?" He wasn't shouting anymore, but most people with any sense of self preservation would have run away if Snape had spoken to them in his new tone; it was the deadly quiet voice that promised pain if you didn't shut-up.

"Professor McGonagall already tried to transfigure my clothes this morning; it doesn't work for very long." And because Harry couldn't resist showing off a little more he used wandless, nonverbal magic to return his clothes and hair to their original state.

And with that said Harry grabbed his booksack and practically skipped out of the dungeons, taking extra care to flash one last, smug, grin at everyone in the room.

Once Harry was back in the main castle he thought about what he should do for the next hour and a half. Eventually he headed to the school library.

He went to the miscellaneous books section; the place where books that there aren't enough of them on a subject for them to have their own section are kept.

He browsed through the shelves and found a few things he thought might be interesting.

By the time he had picked a book it was soon time for him to start thinking about heading to his next class.

He went over to Madam Pince and checked out his book. While he was on his way out of the library Harry realized that he didn't know where he should be going.

After checking his schedule Harry headed down to Hagrid's hut to meet his fellow Fifth Year Gryffindors for Care of Magical Creatures.

They were all quite shocked to find Professor Grubbly-Plank instead of Hagrid.

Harry didn't really pay any attention to the lesson. He was too busy talking to Hermione and Ron.

"Harry!" Hermione had exclaimed upon finding him. "Why did you do that to professor Snape? He was only fixing your uniform so that it was following school rules you shouldn't have-"

"That's not important!"Ron interrupted." The important part is what did you do to him? He tried about a dozen times to fix it, but nothing worked!"

"I used a modified Permanent Sticking charm after I changed the color to keep the color change in place. It won't be going anywhere for a while, it's going to stay like that until _**I **_reverse it; no one else can change it, his hair will even grow that way until he politely asks me to fix it for him."

"But Harry, you could get expelled for that! What do you think Dumbledore will say when he hears about it?"

"I don't really care, but I expect he might think it's funny."

"What do you mean you don't care; Dumbledore is Headmaster and he can expel you, and you don't care?" Hermione was always terribly afraid of expulsion.

"Hermione I don't trust Dumbledore so I don't really care what he does, because I'm not going to let him control my life any longer."

"How do you not trust him anymore? You used to trust him, why not anymore?" Hermione never gives up, it seems.

"I had my eyes opened this summer." Harry said, as if this explained everything.

"Mate, you keep talking about this summer, what exactly did you do? 'Cause you're really different and we're all confused. I even heard a rumor that you've got a tattoo, that's how different you are this year; people think you're so different that you'd actually have a tattoo. Crazy, isn't it?"

Harry ran his hand through his hair in a self-conscious way and he had a sheepish expression when he said "Listen I might explain it all later when no one can hear."

"Hang on, it's not true is it, Harry? You didn't deny it." Sometimes Hermione is too observant.

"Later!" Harry said, and in an effort to end the questioning he went to get a closer look at the creatures Grubbly-Plank was teaching about.

They got the hint and didn't talk about summer or mention anything odd that Harry did the rest of the day.

After Care of Magical creatures was lunchtime. When Harry saw the potions professor enter the Great Hall at lunch he couldn't help himself and busted out laughing.

Snape had tried to hide the fiasco that was his hair with a hat. His hair was pulled up into a ponytail and his pointy, black hat was pulled low on his head to try and hide the red and gold. It wasn't very successful.

He laughed more than he had in a few weeks; it wouldn't have been so funny, but when Snape heard his laughter the expression on his face made Harry laugh even more, he looked ready to kill.

All the students and staff were wondering what was possibly so funny by now. They followed the direction he was looking and in less than two minutes, quite possibly a new speed record, everyone in the Hall had noticed Snape's hair that he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to hide.

Snape, of course, noticed that the attention of most of the Hall was on him. Realizing that everyone could already see it anyway, Snape reached up and, with a very overdramatic motion, swept the ridiculous hat off his head for everyone to get a good look.

There was laughter all across the hall, even from the Slytherin and staff tables. Professor McGonagall was trying so hard to hold in her laughter that she was nearly crying, but she couldn't help it; it was far too funny to see the ever-serious, Slytherin, Severus Snape with his entire head covered in the Gryffindor colors.

After a few minutes everyone was composed enough to finish their meal, but there were still occasional giggles whenever anyone happened to glance up and see Snape again.

After the bell Harry and his fellow Fifth Year Gryffindors had a break, so they made their way back to Gryffindor Tower to wait for their time to go to charms.

In Charms, Professor Flitwick didn't say anything about Harry's clothes or hair. Professor Flitwick was also delighted when Harry, who had never really shown much talent in Charms (other than Summoning Charms), got the charm the class was learning on the first try.

Of course, it wasn't really the first time Harry had learned that charm, but he wasn't about to tell that to professor Flitwick. Harry managed to get out of homework in that class, since he was already doing the charm perfectly.

After class he followed Ron and Hermione back to Gryffindor tower, resigned to the fact that he would soon be trying to explain his cover story to his friends.

They led him straight into the Fifth Year boy's dorm room, where they shut the door then turned to look at him expectantly.

"What do you want to know?" he asked while taking off his cloak and putting it on his bed.

"Everything, but you can start with what you did this summer."

"Fine, but don't interrupt. Okay, I guess it starts when I got tired of being Dudley's punching bag. He and his gang were beating me up every day, so one morning I left before they woke up. I packed all my stuff and ran away. I went to Diagon Alley and I got a room at the Leaky Cauldron. You know how there are all kinds of interesting people in Diagon Alley? Well I met one, his name was Dante Grey. I kept running into him all over the Alley. He was staying in the Leaky Cauldron, too. One day, it was the last day he was going to be in London, we ended up sitting at tables near each other at Dinner and so we started talking. I found out that he believed me about Voldemort, no matter what Fudge says, by the way. Anyway, I found out that he had just left a job homeschooling some kids whose family didn't want them to leave home. And that got us talking about how well I do in school. After I admitted that I was pretty hopeless in most of my subjects, other than Defense, he offered to tutor me over the summer so that I could be caught up in all my subjects, and even get a little ahead. So, I spent the rest of the holiday with him and he was a great teacher. That's about it. Any questions now?"

"Yes!" They both said.

"That doesn't explain why you don't trust Dumbledore, so, out with it; Why don't you like Dumbledore anymore?" Hermione asked first.

"I found out that he's not very good about respecting other people's wishes. I found out that in my parent's Will it said that, under no circumstances, was I supposed to live with the Dursleys. You know who I was supposed to live with if my parents weren't around? Either Sirius, Professor Lupin, or Neville's family."

"Neville's family?"

"Yeah, Ron, apparently my dad's mom was friends with Neville's Gran and then in school my parents were friends with his. So, it was in my parents' Will that I should grow up with them if my parents weren't around."

"Mate, that sucks, you shouldn't have had to deal with the muggles, but why does this mean you don't like Dumbledore anymore?" Ron asked.

"He knew all about my parent's Will! He actually had to fight against it at the Ministry in order to put me with the muggles! How much more do you think he's influenced my life, without my even knowing it?"

"Oh. I guess I see your point now, Harry. But I still think Dumbledore really had your best interests at heart."

Harry snorted "If you say so, Hermione."Harry said dismissively. "Now, what was your question Ron?"

"Where did all the advanced stuff you know now come from, and what's with the purple hair, and what about the rumors about a tattoo?"

Harry laughed. "One at a time, Ron. All the advanced stuff I know, Dante taught it to me. You'd be surprised by how much you can learn in two and a half months with a teacher all to yourself and a teacher who is actually nice to you, and when you don't have to bother with homework.

"The purple hair is easy enough; there was a constant prank war going on between us, it was quite fun. One day I turned Dante's hair a terrible shade of lime green. He removed it in about two seconds then he came after me with the purple streaks. When I decided I liked it he taught me that charm I used on Snape, the one to make it grow with your hair so that it stays there as long as you want it. The one I used on Snape can only be reversed by me because I cast the spell that did it. But the one on my hair is a weaker version of a similar spell, anyone who knows how can undo it, otherwise neither Snape nor McGonagall could have gotten rid of it."

"Okay, but what about this tattoo? I mean I only overheard it from one person, but really, people actually think you have a tattoo."

Ron was never going to forget about the tattoo, was he?

Ron also looked like he was about to laugh at the idea, but when he caught sight of Harry's smirk he looked more shocked than amused.

"You really have one! Well, let's see it then!" Ron exclaimed after coming out of his shock.

"Alright, one second."

Harry stood up off of his bed, where he had been lying while talking, and took off his robes. They couldn't see either yet because his shirt covered the dragon and his sleeve covered the part of the Falcon that was on his upper arm. He could tell from Ron's crestfallen expression that he didn't believe the rumor anymore; that was until Ron noticed Harry slipping his purple muscle-shirt off.

Once the shirt was off and the tattoos fully visible Ron was obviously impressed.

"Whoa! How'd you get it to move like that? And why'd you get those two; not that I don't like them, I really do, but why those?"

"Well I should think that this one was perfectly obvious." Harry said pointing to the Hungarian Horntail. "No idea yet? Here let me explain." Harry opened the first compartment on his trunk, the one that was just a normal looking trunk with no special features, and he reached in and after a second of searching he pulled out the moving replica of the Horntail he fought. Showing it to them he said "The first task, remember? I pulled this out of the bag and I just showed it to the wizard who did the tattoo and they made it just like it for me."

"Oh, I get it now." Said Ron. "What about the other one?"

Harry was saved from answering when the door burst open with a loud BANG.

It was Seamus coming into the room. He ignored the trio while he walked over to his trunk and put his potions textbook in it. He turned around and started to leave, but stopped when he noticed Harry who was still standing there with no shirt on and the tattoos clearly visible.

"Bloody Hell, Potter! When did you get those?"

Harry was about to answer, but he was stopped again.

This time the noise came from down in the common room, but it wasn't just a 'bang' it was the sound of somewhat terrified screaming.

Harry bolted down the stairs, drawing his wand as he ran; ready for anything.

When he reached the common room he quickly realized that there was no real danger. The screaming had come from a bunch of first years who were all staring at what looked like a giant canary.

"What happened?" A seventh year that Harry thought might be a prefect asked one terrified eleven year old.

Harry normally would have left now that he realized there was nothing he could do, but he kinda wanted to hear the explanation for this.

"I don't know! Some red-headed boy gave us a plate of desserts and then left. When Laurie tried one that happened, it was terrifying!"

The little girl, Laurie, was gradually losing her feathers and turning back into herself.

Harry knew what must have happened; the Twins were trying out some new product. He could see them laughing quietly over in a corner.

He went over and flopped into a chair beside where they were sitting. George explained. "Canary Creams; just one bite and you turn into a giant bird!"

"Fun, so how is the joke shop business?"

"Well, we recently came into a great sum of money that is helping immensely." Said Fred, winking at Harry; it was Harry, after all, who gave them his 1000 galleons of prize money, as an investment in their joke business, before the summer holidays.

"Yes," Agreed George. "We've found a shop in Diagon Alley that we can almost afford, hopefully with profits from what we can sell this semester we can get it when for our Christmas present to ourselves. The shop's a bit of a mess, but it's nothing magic can't fix."

"Great! If you guys need any help with anything just let me know."

George was first to talk this time. "You've already helped more than anyone else ever has. But, I'm tired of business talk; what's this we heard about an incident in Potions?"

"You're right, George. Business is dull talk. Please give details about how the greasy, Slytherin, git has suddenly developed a liking for Gryffindor colors, Harry."

Harry told the entire story, starting with the conversation with Ron and ending with how he had explained to his friends that it wouldn't be going anywhere unless Snape asked Harry to undo it.

They were all three laughing about Snape's predicament quite loudly and were attracting many curious eyes. But the people that had started staring at them to find out what was so funny soon found themselves staring more at Harry than either of the twins.

They were staring for a few reasons: he was practically polling on the ground with laughter, he was shirtless in the middle of the common room, he had two tattoos (something that was incredibly rare in people still in school), and the girls were staring because they were just now realizing how incredibly different Harry looked from last year; they were all pretty much in agreement that Harry Potter was now extremely Hot!

Harry and the twins became aware of the quiet of the rest of the room eventually. Once they had regained their composure Harry suddenly became aware of the fact that he was half naked, wearing only a pair of snug, dark jeans and dragonhide boots, in front of over 20% of the school. He quickly excused himself and went back to his dorm room. A little bit later Ron and Hermione joined him upstairs.

"Hey, what was so funny?"

"Hey. I was telling them the details of Snape's new style."

Ron snorted before getting back to their previous discussion. "Okay, so what's up with the second tattoo?"

"Not much." Harry lied. "It's just my favorite bird." Both friends looked skeptical, but they didn't press for information, sensing this wasn't something Harry was going to share immediately.

"Okay." said Ron "Well, if that's all there is to say I suggest we go down to the Great Hall; it's time for dinner."

"Sure." Harry jumped off of his bed, where he had been reading, and grabbed his shirt. He had no desire to be shirtless in front of the entire school. After Harry had pulled on his purple shirt and matching cloak, he didn't even bother with his robes, they made their way downstairs for dinner.

.

The rest of the first two weeks passed fairly smoothly.

By lunchtime on the second day of school it was known by everyone in the school that Harry Potter has two tattoos.

Most teachers didn't bother Harry about his clothes or hair, even though some days he didn't even bother wearing robes at all and just wore muggle clothing. Harry, along with the rest of the school, was fairly sure he only got away with it because his teachers were all a bit terrified of having their hair turned some terribly gaudy color and being unable to rid themselves of it. Snape still hadn't realized that if he wanted the spell undone he would have to get Harry to do it.

By breakfast on the second day of school everyone in the castle had known the story of how Snape came to have a Gryffindor colored head.

Harry had taken to spending his Potions lessons in the library. He had a feeling he wouldn't be welcome in the dungeons anytime soon, and it wasn't like he didn't already know everything taught at Hogwarts and more about Potions. While his classmates were all busy learning how to brew useless potions and slaving away over 3 foot essays on the uses of dragon liver, Harry was busy teaching himself an obscure branch of magic. It was something he'd never heard of until he saw the book on it in the library; Intent Magic, it is a type of magic that doesn't have any spells. The way it works is similar to a Patronus; you concentrate on extremely powerful emotions and visualize what you want to happen. The emotion you concentrate has to fit with the intended effect. For example, if harry wanted to cast something similar to a cheering charm he would concentrate on really powerful feelings of happiness. Intent Magic is far less limited than regular magic because there is no need to know spells; all you need is an intended effect and the right emotions to power it. You can do almost anything with Intent Magic and Harry spent every Potions class period practicing.

.

The only real problem with the beginning of Harry's school year was short, fat, wore too much pink, and reminded everyone of a toad. It goes by the name of Professor Dolores Umbridge.

The first time Harry had laid eyes on her he had known it wouldn't be a pleasant year.

After arguing with Umbridge over whether or not Voldemort was really back, and attending that horrid detention, Harry had altogether stopped going to his Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, as they were quite useless to anybody who did attend them.

After his detention, on the day of the argument with Umbridge, Harry had immediately stormed from the toad's office and gone to find Professor McGonagall. After he told McGonagall about his detention, and found out that Blood-Quills are illegal (he had carefully made sure to keep that information in a part of his mind where it would be easily accessible for when it came time to get rid of Umbridge), Harry had asked her what Dumbledore had been thinking when he hired that Umbridge woman.

McGonagall had told him how the Ministry had put Umbridge in the post when Dumbledore hadn't been able to find a suitable teacher for the post.

Ever since then he had skipped all DADA lessons and skipped all of the detentions Umbridge assigned to him for skipping lessons. He spent his free DADA periods in Gryffindor Tower trying to come up with a Plan to get rid of Umbridge.

.

Over the last two weeks Harry's friends had stopped questioning him whenever he did something that would have been odd for the old Harry.

They had grown accustomed to his intelligence being far superior to either of theirs in most everything, even though they barely knew anything about how much Harry really knew (he couldn't tell them that he probably knew as much about his school subjects as the teachers).

They had become used to his 'Devil-May-Care' attitude, but it had taken a lot for them to get used to it. They had spent all summer preparing themselves for a brooding, short-tempered, and angry Harry, instead they had gotten a Harry who did what he wanted when he wanted, was usually perfectly happy, and spent half of his spare time with the Weasley Twins; always planning some great prank or designing some new product for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. It was quite a lot for them to take in.

His friends had even grown used to him spending time with Luna 'Looney' Lovegood. He had started talking to Luna whenever he saw her. His friends were confused about why, but eventually they got used to it and started to try getting to know her as well.

.

Perhaps even more amazed at the new Harry than his friends, were the teachers. Every teacher whose classes Harry attended was amazed at his quick and easy progress through his lessons. Most of his teachers had asked him what he had done that left him so far ahead of his peers. He had told any Professor who had asked him that he had simply gotten a tutor over the holidays. They had all wanted to know who this tutor was and had all been shocked to have never heard of the fellow. Harry had explained to them all that Dante Grey had been homeschooled.

Harry's professors, while they were slightly afraid of what he would do to their clothing or hair if they criticized his, mostly just let him get away with the lack of following to dress code; they didn't really care what a student wore when that student never misbehaved in class and was always top of those subjects that he attended.

To professor McGonagall's amazement, Harry was even excelling in his new subjects. He was top of the class even in subjects that he had only started this school year.

.

Harry's peaceful daily routine, which consisted of waking up early and exercising, going to his classes, skipping Potions and DADA, splitting his time between all his friends, learning Intent Magic, skipping Umbridge's detentions (she somehow didn't realize he wouldn't go even if she assigned them every day for his habit of not attending DADA), and grinning smugly at Snape whenever he saw him, was ruined one day in the third week of school after Transfiguration class.

…

..

.

Author's Note- Hey people! Thanks to everyone who's reading this. I really love being able to check the traffic on this story and always seeing that there are more and more people reviewing or even just reading it!

I hope everyone's happy with how Harry dealt with Snape. I didn't really want to put Harry through the torture of being around Snape when he already knows everything taught in Hogwarts Potions lessons. Well, really he already knows everything in all his classes, but he goes to those just so it looks like he has to learn something. And I can't really do a good job of writing Snape being cruel to students, so I had to get rid of him early on. He's actually one of my favorite characters; I don't like leaving my world where he's cool and entering the real world where he's cruel.

Nobody worry, Sirius is coming back! And it should be in the next few chapters when we get to have more Sirius!


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer- I don't own it. It all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Author's Note- Nobody worry, Harry will have a girlfriend soon enough.

Chapter six…..

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Harry's peaceful days were ruined during the third week of school one day after Transfiguration. Professor McGonagall had asked him to stay after class and he could see from her expression that it wouldn't be good news.

It wasn't.

She told him that Umbridge was going to inform the Department of Education at the Ministry of his constant skipping of her lessons. Her goal was to get him expelled for Truancy.

Harry didn't want to deal with Umbridge, but he didn't want to be expelled; he would have been fine with not being at Hogwarts any longer, but when you get expelled they take your wand away and Harry really didn't want that to happen.

So, starting the next day, Harry was forced to actually attend Defense Against the Dark Arts.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Umbridge refused to allow them to do anything other than read through the textbook, so all Harry really had to do was sit in his chair and pretend.

Instead of reading he was really entertaining his classmates. No one knew who was doing it, but he amused everyone by causing controlled havoc in the room. At random points in time the classroom walls would change color, or there would be odd explosions, or the chalk would just hop up and start drawing and writing on the board.

Harry's havoc served two purposes. It kept the students from dying of boredom, and it let Harry practice his Intent Magic.

Harry was using Intent Magic to cause all the entertainment. He would have just used wandless magic, but the hand movements would have given it away that it was him doing it all. With Intent Magic all he had to do was think of what he wanted to happen and that's what would happen. So if he wanted the chalk to draw a toad on the board behind Umbridge, where she couldn't see it, that's what happened.

Most people were under the impression that Peeves had decided to take free reign in the classroom, and Harry wasn't correcting anyone.

Umbridge, however, didn't miss the connection between the havoc starting and Harry attending her classes. So, Harry spent most evenings writing lines of 'I must not tell lies' or 'I must not act like a poltergeist'.

Harry was beyond mad that he had to attend these torture sessions if he didn't want to be expelled. He began spending most of his free time plotting with the Weasley twins on ways to get rid of Umbridge.

He didn't think of his wonderful plan until one night after he came back to the common room from Quidditch practice.

It was about 5 weeks into the school year and after Quidditch practice that evening Harry and Ron had come back to the common room to find Neville struggling over an essay from Umbridge. Harry had finished the essay the day before, but Ron had yet to start it.

While Ron and Neville worked on the essay Harry decided to write a letter to Sirius. Sirius had asked Harry to keep him updated on happenings at Hogwarts and up until now he had forgotten all about the request.

He wrote the letter to 'Dante Grey' just in case Ron happened to look at it and Harry didn't want Ron to figure out that he had been with Sirius over the summer.

_Hey Dante,_

_I'm sorry I forgot about writing to tell you about what's happening at Hogwarts, I've been a bit preoccupied._

_You would be proud of the way I got rid of Snape bothering me. I had him for my very first class and I haven't been back since then. You see, Snape still hasn't figured out that the only way to get rid of his red and gold (Gryffindor!) hair is to ask me, politely, to undo it._

_The new Defense Professor is absolutely horrible! She's from the Ministry and hasn't let us do any magic in her class, yet, nor does she plan to. Not that I'm letting that stop me. Her classroom will probably never be the same; the walls now change color on a daily basis, the chalk has been enjoying free reign over what it writes and draws on her board, and the explosions and other noises emitting from the room are very amusing._

_I'm actually top of most of my classes now! Thanks a ton for all the help this summer. I dropped Divination and joined Arithmancy and Ancient Runes._

_How's everything going wherever you are?_

_Harry Potter._

Ron had noticed Harry writing and, once he finished the letter, started asking him about it.

"Who're you writing to?"

"Just Dante."

"Oh, that's the guy who tutored you and never gave you any homework, right?"

Harry laughed a little. "Yes, Ron."

"Well I wish he was here; our teachers could take a lesson from him. It would be great to not have homework for once." Ron said longingly. Ron always waits 'til the last minute to do his homework, so it piles up.

"Yes they could take lessons from him, Dante was a great teacher," Harry said. But then he started thinking, and came up with a plan.

"Hey, Ron I gotta go. I need to tell the Twins something."

"Sure, bye."

But harry was already gone without even waiting for a response from Ron. He found the Twins sitting over in a corner working on a recipe for Skiving Snackboxes.

"Guys, I've got a brilliant plan! If it works she'll be gone for good!"

"Really? That's great!"

"Let's hear it then."

"So this summer I had a tutor who taught me pretty much everything I know. And I don't think he's got any sort of a job right now. And he's absolutely brilliant."

"Brilliant as in awesome, or brilliant as in genius?"

"Cause there's a really big difference."

"Both." Answered Harry.

"No one can be both."

"Want to bet? I bet I can convince you that he's both kinds of brilliant with just one sentence." Harry was absolutely positive the twins would be begging him to get 'Dante' to the school as quick as possible very soon.

"What is it?"

"He was a Marauder." The twins had never been informed of the identities of the Marauders; Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. And it was the truth, he was a Marauder; just under a different name.

The expressions on the Twins' faces were absolutely priceless. They looked like they might faint, or start jumping with joy.

"You know-"

"-Who the Marauders were!"

"Yep. And I have a plan to get one of them in the castle."

"What is it?"

"Professor McGonagall told me that the only reason Dumbledore hired Umbridge was because no one else would take the job and the Ministry put her here. So hopefully if someone better qualified applies Dumbledore will fire Umbridge and we'll get Professor Grey. I know he'll apply for the job if I tell him my plan. Dumbledore should hire him; he's gotten a reputation for being an excellent teacher thanks to his success with making me smart. I only told you guys because I wanted to tell you to stop bothering to try coming up with plans. But you can't tell anyone about him being a Marauder; he didn't even come to Hogwarts and he was just best friends with the other Marauders."

"Fine."

"I still can't wait to meet him." Said Fred.

"I know. I'm gonna go write to him about my new plan."

Harry left and went across the common room to add his plan to his letter. After he sat down, and explained the new plan to Ron, he wrote a P.S. on the letter explaining what he wanted Sirius to do; and begging him to do it. The P.S. also explained why he was positive Dumbledore would hire 'Dante Grey'.

.

The next morning Harry got a quick reply from Sirius; or 'Dante' as Harry needed to start getting used to him being known as.

All it said was:

_Good idea. I have an appointment with Dumbledore today at Noon._

All day Harry was walking around with a gleeful smile and practically bouncing in his chair in class.

At lunch, which takes place at 12:30, Harry looked around and there was no sign of Dumbledore.

At dinner that night there was still no sign of Dumbledore, but there was also no sign of Umbridge; Harry took this as a good sign.

Harry was made absolutely positive Umbridge's absence was a good sign when Starchaser, Sirius' owl, came into the Great Hall as Harry was eating his Dinner.

He carried a letter that made Harry shout with joy upon reading it.

_Get used to calling me Professor Grey. I start tomorrow. See you soon._

'_Dante Grey'_

After Harry read the letter he shouted with joy, jumped up out of his seat at the table, and ran down the table to show the Twins the good news.

They were thrilled!

…

The next morning, after Harry got back from his daily exercising, Harry was practically giddy with joy as he got ready for the day.

Today he wore a sleeveless black shirt that showed off his new muscles very nicely; Harry loved having muscles worthy of showing off and had a habit of wearing clothes that made them obvious. He also wore a pair of plain, black jeans.

At breakfast there was no explanation about who the mysterious stranger at the staff table was, there was also no explanation about Umbridge's disappearance.

Sirius has an annoying habit of constantly changing his appearance so that Harry is never exactly sure when he sees him if it's really him or not. But when Harry walked in and saw only one new face in the entire Great Hall it was pretty obvious which one was Sirius. Sirius now had messy dark brown hair which was swept slightly to the right and reached down to around neck-length, lightly tanned skin, and very light blue-green eyes. He was around 6'2" and a similar build to Harry. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties.

When Harry saw 'Professor Grey' he waved enthusiastically and got a wave in return.

Since most people in the Great Hall were looking at Professor Grey, they all saw this exchange and were now even more curious about the man; but no matter how many people asked him, Harry wasn't going to spoil the surprise for anyone.

In a wonderful coincidence Harry's first class on that day was Double Defense Against the Dark Arts.

A minute or two after Harry saw Sirius leave to go to his classroom Harry was dragging his friends from the Great Hall.

When they got to the DADA classroom and entered, everyone, other than Harry, was surprised to find the mystery stranger from breakfast leaning casually against the teacher's desk. Possibly even more surprising was the completely redecorated room.

There was no more pink anywhere. The walls had been repainted to a nice, shiny gold. The desks had been completely eliminated. Instead of the rows of desks filling the room there were now comfortable chairs lining the walls. There was nothing in the middle of the extremely large room.

Most people seemed a little confused by the changes and were just huddled together by the door. The only one who wasn't was Harry. He had already entered the room and picked a comfortable chair near the front of the classroom.

"What are you all waiting for; I don't bite!" Sirius laughed "Come on in and pick a chair."

Everyone cautiously entered and picked chairs; most people were trying to sit as far away from the teacher as possible. Harry was sure that wouldn't last long; by the next class people would be fighting for the chance to sit as close to the teacher as possible, Sirius was just that cool.

"Hello, everyone. I'm Professor Grey and I have replaced Professor Umbridge." There was cheering from everyone. "I actually plan to teach you some useful skills and you will all be passing your OWLs in a few months. Sirius said that part very seriously. "I know that you've all only had one good professor so far, Professor Lupin, but I think by the end of the year you should all be caught up to where you need to be. Today we're going to be doing something so that I can see exactly what level you're all on. Any questions?"

Silence. And no one raised their hand to ask any questions.

"Good. So what we're going to be doing today should be a little different from anything you've done before. I'm going to put you all in pairs and you're going to duel one pair at a time."

He then went around the room assigning people a dueling partner. The only problem with his plan was the uneven amount of students. When he reached Harry, who was the last person and therefore had no partner, he said "Well, Mr. Potter, I guess since you don't have a partner you get to duel me."

Harry and Sirius both grinned; Harry was fairly certain that Sirius had done that on purpose.

"Okay, sir."

"Good, we'll go last." He said to Harry. Then to the rest of the class he announced "Don't worry about this; it's not going to be graded, I just need to know how much you all know. I want you all to use anything you know how to do I this duel. The only thing I don't want is any Unforgivables or Dark Arts." The last bit was mostly directed toward the Slytherin students.

The first pair was Neville and Hermione. It was over very quickly. After about twenty seconds Hermione got tired of taking it easy on Neville and used Expelliarmus and Stupefy in quick succession.

All groups were fairly pathetic, to put it bluntly.

The only group that showed any sort of skill was Draco Malfoy versus Theodore Nott. Their duel actually lasted an entire 3 minutes before Nott managed to stun Malfoy.

The only spells that most people in the room knew were stupid ones like Jelly Legs and Bat Bogey hexes.

Anyone watching Professor Grey would have seen that he was incredibly disappointed. Anyone watching Harry would have seen that he was disgusted. Every single duel was entirely pathetic, and both Sirius and Harry knew it.

Professor Grey had his work cut out for him if he intended to make these students able to defend themselves.

The end of all the pathetic nonsense came when it was Harry's turn to duel the Professor. At the end of the summer Harry and Sirius were fairly evenly matched and they never knew who would win when they practiced dueling.

Now they both had advantages that they hadn't had back then. Sirius' advantage was that Harry hadn't been able to properly practice dueling in the last few weeks. Harry's advantage was that Sirius didn't know about his new skills with Intent Magic; Harry had actually become quite skilled in it and he didn't even need to use emotions to power it anymore. Now he could just concentrate on the effect he wanted and it would happen.

The class wasn't really paying much attention at first; they all expected Harry to have his butt kicked within the first minute.

After the fist thirty seconds they started paying much more attention. Harry and the Professor were incredible to them. They were both using mostly nonverbal magic, they were both dodging excellently, they were both throwing spells that most of the class had never seen before, and they were both using muggle Martial Arts to try to gain the upper hand.

There were two points in the duel that were most exciting to the class.

The first was when Sirius actually managed to disarm Harry; everyone had expected it to be over right then and there, but it wasn't. Harry had just dodged out of the way of Sirius' next spell, shrugged it off, and started using wandless magic against Sirius.

The second was Harry decided it was time to use his secret weapon to end this duel, because in Harry's opinion thirty minutes was long enough for a friendly duel in front of his classmates, even though they both could have kept going for a lot longer. No one really knew what had happened when they felt a wall of force knock them all over. There was no escaping it; it was as if an extremely powerful wind had come out of Harry and knocked over everything in front of him, Sirius and about six students included. Once Sirius was down Harry had used a Full-Body Bind curse on him, shot ropes out of his hand to tie the Professor up, and then the duel was over.

After Harry had left the Full-Body Bind curse on for about thirty seconds he calmly walked over to Sirius and undid it, leaving him tied up. Squatting down to Sirius's level Harry had asked "Do you concede defeat?" and at his nod Harry untied the Professor and stood up.

Immediately upon being able to stand Sirius had shot up and said "What the bloody hell was that?"

Harry had grinned while the rest of the class giggled at Sirius' question. "That's a secret."

"Uh-huh. We'll see about that." He said to Harry. Then to the rest of the class he added "Any questions?" in a casual, happy, voice that suggested that nothing out of the ordinary had just happened; and to Sirius nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he was used to being beat by Harry.

The class looked at him with open-mouthed expressions that made both him and Harry laugh. Harry went to go sit down in his chair and left Sirius to be bombarded with questions.

"Where did you learn that?"

"Will we be able to do that?"

"That was wicked!"

"What was that thing Harry did at the end?"

"Will you teach us to do everything silently?"

"Will we learn to do all that without our wands like Harry?"

Sirius was trying his best to answer all the questions that were being asked and convince everyone that they would be learning most of the stuff they saw in the duel, excluding wandless magic and Martial Arts; and whatever it was Harry did at the end.

Harry was still laughing occasionally at his classmates' dumbfounded expressions while Ron tried to question him.

"Where did you learn all that from?"

"Ron, I explained this a month ago. You know that I learned it all from him." Harry pointed over in Professor Grey's direction.

"Oh yeah. I forgot. But that was bloody awesome! I hope we learn to do that."

"I think he plans to teach a lot this year."

Just then the bell rang and everyone made to leave. Harry, however, stopped to talk with Sirius after telling Ron that he would catch up to them in Transfiguration.

"Hey. That was fun." Sirius said.

"Yeah it was. I wanted to thank you for saving us all. If I had to stay in Umbridge's classes I wouldn't have lasted all year. The Twins and I were considering running away from school and just starting up their joke shop earlier than planned. Speaking of the Twins, they're going to want to meet you soon. They don't know who you really are, but I told them you were friends with the Marauders; it was them who gave me the Marauders Map a couple of years ago. Don't be surprised if they worship the ground you walk on."

Sirius laughed. "You can tell them that if they want they can join the prank war. We can have teams, you and one twin versus me and the other twin. It'll be great!"

"Awesome! Well, I got to get to Transfiguration; I'm already late and McGonagall is the one teacher I don't want to make angry."

Five minutes later Harry was walking into Transfiguration.

"Potter, you're late."

"Sorry, Ma'am. I was held back in Professor Grey's class."

"Alright, how is Professor Grey doing teaching?" She asked.

"Wonderful, he's brilliant."

"Yes, I know. He does good work." She said; referring to the fact that Harry was so much better at schoolwork this year. "Well, sit down, but don't be late again."

Harry grinned at the compliment from Professor McGonagall; it wasn't something that happened a lot.

Harry went through the rest of the day bothered by even more people staring than usual; it seemed that news about his duel had made its way around the school rather quickly.

.

The next morning at breakfast Dumbledore had a fun announcement for everyone.

"This year we are going to have a special treat on Halloween. Our new Professor Grey has had a wonderful idea; this year there will be a Masquerade Ball for students 3rd Year and up instead of our usual Feast."

There was some cheering after this announcement.

"Yes, it is a wonderful idea. I agree." Dumbledore continued. "And so that everyone can get what they need for the Ball we're going to have an early Hogsmeade weekend. Not this weekend but the next, everyone with permission will be allowed to go to the village."

There was even more cheering at this announcement.

….

Over the next week the only things people really talked about were how awesome Professor Grey was, what they would wear to the Ball, and who they would take to the Ball.

Harry had been asked by plenty of people to the Ball, but he had, politely, turned down all invitations. He wasn't sure who he wanted to go with, but he knew it wasn't any of the people who had asked him. He had been asked by girls from every year 3rd and up and by girls from every house. He had even been asked by Cho, but he was over her and had, once again, politely declined.

He spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out who he would like to ask, but had no success.

It was Friday morning, the day before the Hogsmeade weekend, when Harry finally decided who to ask. The answer came to him as he entered the Great Hall for breakfast and overheard some people talking while on his way to the Gryffindor table for breakfast.

Author's Note-

Cliffy again! Ha-ha. But don't worry you'll find out first thing next chapter.

What does everyone think about Sirius being there? I hope you all like it, because he isn't going anywhere. And now no one has to worry about his safety! He'll be right where Harry can keep an eye on him.

And all I'm going to say about the new Prank War is: Snape better watch out! I think with Sirius, the Twins, and Harry all in the same castle Snape might just go crazy!

If you want to see what I wanted Sirius to look like imagine Damon from the Vampire Diaries on TV. The actor's name is Ian Somerhalder.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer- I still don't own it. It all belongs to J..

Author's Note-I almost decided to be cruel and not let you all know who Harry would take to the Ball until he was at the Ball, so count yourselves lucky that I already promised that you would find out at the beginning of this chapter. And someone even guessed correctly who Harry would be taking. Here it is….

Chapter Seven…

Harry decided who he would ask to the Halloween Ball the day before the Hogsmeade weekend.

The thing that made him decide was something that he overheard on his way to the Gryffindor table for breakfast.

What he overheard did not make him happy and so he decided to do something to stop it.

What he overheard went something like this:

"I don't even know why you're going to Hogsmeade tomorrow; it's not like you're going to get a date to the Ball." Said one person that Harry didn't know at the Ravenclaw table.

"Yeah, you might as well not even go tomorrow, the whole point of the shopping trip is to get costumes for the Masquerade." Said Another.

Harry looked over to see who they were talking to and was not impressed. He knew that people thought she was a little odd, but Luna happened to be one of his favorite people in the entire school! He thought for a few seconds before realizing that he might actually _like _Luna. Like actually like, like her.

'Oh well, one way to find out if I really do like her like that.' He thought. 'Ask her to the Ball, and see how it goes.'

So that's what he did. He went right over to the Ravenclaw table, where those idiots were still bothering Luna, and interrupted. He made sure to make a scene of it so that everyone would know that he actually liked Luna and that she really did have friends and people who like her.

"Excuse me, so sorry to interrupt." He said loudly and very sarcastically and patronizingly. He then turned to face Luna and asked "Luna, I have something important to ask you. I was wondering, would you go out with me, and be my date to the Halloween Masquerade?"

Everyone who had been within earshot was stunned into silence. Only Luna seemed able to think coherently.

She was smiling and looking at Harry. "Of course. I'd love to, Harry; that sounds wonderful." She said in that dreamy voice of hers that often made people wonder if she was even seeing the same world as everyone else.

"Great, well, I guess I'll see you later, bye." And Harry, who had suddenly become slightly uncomfortable with all the staring, went to go eat at the Gryffindor table.

He spent the rest of the day trying to ignore the confused expressions whenever people saw him.

…

The next day most of the school went to Hogsmeade. Harry didn't see anything that really appealed to him at any of the stores. Everything they had that could be considered nice enough to wear was really boring. So, just like he usually does, Harry came up with a new plan. Luckily for Harry, Professor Grey was chaperoning this Hogsmeade trip and would be able to help with the plan.

Harry went to find Sirius and ask him for help.

"Hey, I need some help."

"Tell me something I don't already know, Harry. Alright, what do you need?"

"I can't exactly find what I'm looking for in any of the shops here. If I tell you what I want to wear would you run to London to find it for me?"

"Sure, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm chaperoning this trip and I can't just take off."

"That's fine. The Ball isn't even for another two weeks so it's not like there's any rush."

"Great. When I get back tomorrow I'll send Starchaser to let you know so that you can find me and get your new clothes for the Ball. Now what are you looking to wear?"

Harry told him what to look for and went to find his friends. He still had to get a mask, it is a Masquerade after all

And, on a whim, he decided to get a present for Luna; he was thinking he would get her something nice, like a nice necklace that she could wear at the Ball.

He went and found a mask that would go with what he was having Sirius buy. It was just plain white and slightly sparkly.

After he had a mask he went to find Hermione. If he was going to be buying jewelry he would definitely need a girl's opinion. He and Hermione went to the only jewelry store in Hogsmeade. It was very large and Harry immediately knew it had been a good idea to bring Hermione along. He had no idea where to start.

"Ok, so, do you have any idea what you're looking for, Harry?" She asked.

"Umm…A necklace."

"That's helpful, Harry." She said sarcastically while rolling her eyes.

It took the better part of an hour, but Harry finally found something that he liked and thought Luna would like as well.

It had a silver chain and seven diamond star pendants of different sizes that hung at different lengths from the chain.

Hermione agreed with Harry that it was very nice and she also told Harry that she had seen the dress Luna bought and that the necklace would go with it nicely. She wouldn't tell him anything about the dress though.

Harry paid for the necklace and then they went back to the castle.

.

The next day, just after lunch, Sirius' owl arrived with a letter telling Harry that Sirius was back and in his office waiting for Harry to come get his clothes for the Ball.

Harry went to find Sirius and after collecting his new purchase went back to Gryffindor tower.

After carefully putting his package in his trunk closet, right next to Luna's Necklace, Harry went down to the common room to find his friends.

...

The next two weeks passed fairly uneventfully. The highlights of Harry's day were usually the times when he got to show off in Sirius' class, the Prank War, and spending time with Luna.

He got to show off quite a bit in DADA; Sirius had to go back to basics and teach most of the things that they were supposed to have learned over the previous four years, the only exception being magical creatures as professor Lupin had done an excellent job with those. He had enlisted Harry's help and Harry became something like a teaching assistant. Whenever Sirius taught a new spell or skill and had everyone practicing it they would both go around the class helping anyone who needed it. Mostly Harry worked with Gryffindors and left Sirius to deal with the Slytherins. It was slow, but they were making good progress in class.

.

Harry used to only spend a little time with Luna and talk to her whenever he happened to see her. Now he was spending a lot of his free time with her. He was enjoying really getting to know her; she was a very interesting person.

.

The effects of the Prank War were escalating with every new prank. The teams were Harry and Fred against Sirius and George. It wasn't exactly a war though; it was more of a competition to see who could pull the best prank. The pranks could be pulled on absolutely anyone in the school.

It had started with simple things: putting a charm on a doorway that made everyone who walked through it turn different colors of the rainbow, spiking the pumpkin juice with a potion that made the drinker talk in haiku's for the day, or things along those lines.

Lately the pranks had been coming every day and the castle's inhabitants were beginning to worry. The latest prank had come from Sirius and George. The entire dungeons had been turned into a swamp; Potions classes had been cancelled as no one could get through the swamp. All of the dungeon-dwelling Slytherins, Snape included, had been stuck in their rooms. The swamp was terribly difficult to get rid of and had taken an entire two days to remove.

No one in the castle knew who was behind any of the constant pranks.

Sirius was having more fun than he has had in years.

Everyone in the castle was slightly terrified that the Masquerade would be a target for pranks. But the prankers had all gotten together and decided to ban the Ball from being pranked, so it was going to be perfectly safe.

.

Halloween, the night of the Masquerade Ball, happened to fall on a Saturday, which was a very good thing considering the Ball would probably continue very late into the night if not until the early hours of the morning.

When it was time for Harry to get ready for the Ball he went up to his dorm room with Ron. Harry took a long, relaxing shower before getting dressed.

Needless to say, Harry's dorm-mates were all a little confused with his choice n attire.

You see, while most guys in the school would be wearing dress robes, Harry was wearing a muggle suit. When asked why he was wearing that Harry simple said that it was different and he didn't feel lke wearing the same thing as everyone else.

Harry was very glad that he had gotten Sirius to find him this suit instead of settling for something boring. His suit was perfectly fitting and looked great.

When it came time to go meet Luna in the Entrance Hall Harry donned his mask, grabbed his present to Luna and practically ran down to find her. The necklace wasn't fancily wrapped or anything very special, it was just in the box it came in when he bought it; a plain black, velvet box.

He managed to beat Luna downstairs, but only had to wait a moment before she arrived.

When she did arrive most people in the Hall were pleasantly surprised. For a while no one was actually sure who it was and upon realizing that the person who had just arrived was 'Looney' Lovegood most people were shocked. It had taken most people a little while to figure out who it was, thanks to the mask she wore, but Harry had known immediately upon spotting her; after all, the sparkly mask only covered the right side of her face.

Even Harry, who had always known Luna was both a really cool person and pretty, was slightly surprised before he regained his composure and went to meet his date at the bottom of the stairs.

She looked very nice. Her dress was like nothing Harry had ever seen before. At the top the dress was a creamy white and gradually changed to light blue getting darker the farther down you looked until at the very bottom it was a dark ,almost black, midnight blue. There were clear fake diamonds all over the dress, at the top there were scarce, but they increased in quantity the further down you looked on the dress until, at the midnight blue bottom, they were scattered all over the shimmery fabric of the dress. The torchlight hitting the diamonds gave the dark bottom of the dress an effect like looking into a star-filled night sky. The dress was floor length and strapless; at the top it was slightly snug fitting and around her waist the dress started to loosen and flow out from her body. She was wearing shiny silver stilettos that actually made her not quite so small looking compared to Harry's massive 6'3".

Luna had even taken off her characteristic jewelry: her radish earrings and butterbeer cork necklace. She didn't wear any jewelry at all; something that, when he noticed it, made Harry happy because this way she would be able to wear his necklace.

Walking over to meet Luna at the stairs he made it to the foot of the stairs while she was a few steps from the bottom. He reached out to take her hand and when she gave him her hand, he, on impulse, bowed down and kissed the top of her hand.

They both smiled at each other and, once she was standing next to him, Harry said "You look wonderful."

"Thank you, you look nice too, Harry."

Harry then led her out of the center of the crowd and toward the edges of the crowd, by one of the walls.

He told her that he had gotten her a present and then taken the jewelry box out of the inside pocket of his suit's jacket and held it out to her.

She had been impressed with the necklace and let Harry put it on for her.

Harry had to admit that Hermione was right; the necklace did look nice with her dress. The sparkly stars of the necklace looked nice with the night sky effect that the dress produced.

"I didn't know that you actually had good taste, Harry; I'm surprised that you could pick out such a pretty necklace." Luna had teased.

"I'm full of surprises." Harry answered. "And plus, I had help."

"Oh?"

"Yep."

Just then the doors had opened to the Great Hall and everyone entered the fantastically decorated room.

It had been rearranged to be similar to the Yule Ball. There were lots of tables instead of the usual house tables. Each table looked like it would fit around 10 people.

The Hall itself was fairly dark, only lit by a few floating candles and hundreds of floating Jack-o-Lanterns. The ceiling showed a large bright white full moon with clouds swirling ominously around it. There were the classic bats swooping through the hall. The school ghosts were emitting a soft silvery glow from where they floated throughout the room. The room was decorated in lots of arrange, black, and gray.

Harry thought that the effect was pretty cool.

He and Luna sat at a table with Ron and his date Lavender, Hermione and Terry Boot, Neville and Susan Bones, Ginny and Michael Corner.

At a table next to theirs sat most of Harry's other friends. Fred and George with their dates Angelina and Katie Bell, Sirius- who obviously didn't have a date as he was a teacher, Seamus and Dean with their dates Parvati and Padma Patil.

Throughout the entire dinner there was plenty of conversation and joking; no one was bored for a single second.

After dinner came the dancing part. Harry actually enjoyed this Ball and danced most of the night away. Around 1am, long after the third years and most of the fourth years had been sent to bed by the faculty, Fred and George somehow managed to procure a massive quantity of Firewhiskey and proceeded to try getting most of their friends terribly drunk.

Around 1:30, by which time most people had let their hair down quite a bit thanks to the Firewhiskey, a teacher appeared by the group who had been hidden in a corner of the Hall.

Most of the group had been scared senseless before realizing it was Professor Grey, who had gained a reputation for being incredibly cool and lax about rules. He had muttered "Pathetic." upon seeing everyone's slightly intoxicated states.

Then, to the absolute shock of everyone present, Sirius sat down on the stone floor next to them. He then proceeded to show them how to properly hold their alcohol.

.

The next morning Harry awoke in Gryffindor tower with a splitting headache and the vagueimpression that he had made a fool of himself.

After realizing that he had been awoken by a tapping o the window, Harry went to let Starchaser into his dorm. He carried a package and letter that Harry was very glad to receive.

The letter said:

_Hey Harry,_

_How's your head this beautiful morning?_

_I know your probably wondering what the hell happened yesterday and if you decide you want a chance to review the nights events from a slightly more sober point of view fell free to come find me and use my pensieve to check out my memories._

_The package is something I have a feeling that you and your friends could all use. Just give all the Gryffindors a vial and get them to drink the whole thing. I already sent it to the others in different houses._

_Padfoot_

In the package was 13 vials of a potion that Harry was not proud to say that he recognized very easily from his time with Sirius: Hangover Solution. Sirius had been convinced that since Harry was a legal adult it had been necessary that he learn to hold his alcohol; not that Harry had objected. He had seen more vials of the misty purple potion than he cared to think about.

Harry drank one and instantly felt better. He went to wake up all his dorm-mates, to much protesting, and gave them all a vial of the Hangover Solution. They were all grateful and didn't bother questioning where it came from.

Harry then went to give the Twins their potions and was nearly hexed for waking them up.

When it came time to try and distribute the potions to the girls Harry ran into a slight problem; the stairs didn't want to let him up to the girls' dormitories.

Harry used a skill he had been practicing with Intent Magic and floated up the stairs, it was almost like flying, but he was only hovering a couple inches off the ground. It took a lot of concentration, but he eventually made it up a few flights of stair to a door marked 'Fifth Years'.

He had a feeling that it would not be wise to just barge into their room, and he started knocking. It took a minute of constant banging on the door before anyone opened it. When the door opened it was a grumpy looking Parvati who opened the door.

Upon seeing Harry Potter outside the door she looked like she just might either faint from shock or slam the door in his face for waking them up. Harry would have understood either response. In Gryffindor living memory no guy had managed to make it into the girls' dorms, so that would explain fainting. And slamming the door could have been explained because he had probably just woken up the girls and given them terrible headaches.

He stopped both actions by saying "I come bearing gifts." And holding up the box with the potions in it so she could see. She scowled, but let him in. He then went to wake up Lavender and Hermione. Once they were awake h e explained his presence and handed out the potions. Once they were all awake and healthy he ran into a slight problem.

It seemed like fate was out to embarrass him today. He had been about to turn and leave when he noticed all three girls suddenly looking at him with wide-eyed open-mouthed expressions. He tried to figure out what was going on, but it took him a minute; when he did Harry was thoroughly embarrassed. In his rush to get the potions to all his friends he hadn't exactly bothered to change out of his usual sleepwear; which wasn't much. You see, Harry had a tendency to just sleep in his boxers and hadn't realized when he had left his dorm room that he hadn't put on real clothes. Today Harry's 'sleepwear' was an embarrassingly pink color, just to make it all worse.

Judging from the girls' expressions they weren't sure whether to yell at him for his indecency or just let him stand there and appreciate the view of his admittedly very nice body. Harry made the decision for them.

Waving his hand at himself he wandlessly cast a glamour charm that made it appear as if he was wearing a black t-shirt and pair of drawstring pajama pants. While he did this he said "Sorry, ladies. I didn't realize what I was wearing." Before turning around and bolting from the room, slamming the door behind him. He could distinctly hear girlish giggling coming from the room after he left.

After that he went to float up one more flight of stairs to the sixth year's dorm to repeat the process of handing out potions with Katie and Angelina.

Finally finished with his work he decided to go do his morning workout since he was already up. He changed the glamour charm to make it look like he was wearing his usual workout clothes and left the tower for his morning run and workout.

After returning to the dorm to take a shower and actually get dressed for the day Harry found that all the guys in his dorm had gone back to sleep. After harry was finished with his getting ready for the day, since it was the weekend and he had no intentions of really leaving the tower he just put on the real version of what he had made a glamour charm for in the girls' room, Harry decided Ron would probably get a kick out of his morning adventure and woke him up to tell him.

"Ron, wake up! You won't believe how stupid I am when I tell you what I did this morning."

After Harry had relayed the story of what happened in the girls dorm, Ron's loud, raucous, roars of laughter managed to wake up the still sleeping Neville, Dean, and Seamus. After they asked what was so funny, Harry, deciding that it was funny enough that everyone aught know, told them the story as well. They agreed that they would've been beyond embarrassed and that it was pretty funny.

.

Later that day Harry went to find Sirius and discover what had happened the night before.

He was about to walk down to Professor Grey's office when he had a much more fun idea. He ducked into a deserted classroom, transformed into his Animagus form, and flew down to Sirius' office.

This brilliant idea turned out to be a stupid one.

Harry had stayed in his bird form and started making plenty of racket outside the office door to bring Sirius to open the door. He had made loud 'Fweee'-ing noises and tapped his beak on the frosted window of the door.

When the door had opened and Sirius saw Harry's falcon form outside his door his eyes had opened wide in what Harry could only describe as fear and he had mouthed 'don't transform back' to Harry.

Harry, who was now curious, nodded and landed on Sirius' shoulder. When Sirius shut the door and turned back to the room. Harry quickly realized why Sirius didn't want him to transform back into a human.

Professor McGonagall was in Sirius' office. When she saw Harry, she actually looked as if she might smile.

"That's a beautiful bird! Where did he come from?" She asked,

"Oh, err, this is Bolt. He's my familiar; he's a Gyrfalcon." Sirius half-lied.

"That's nice. So back to what I was asking; was there any truth to what Professor Snape said about you escorting a dozen of my Gryffindors back to the tower just before dawn, and they were all drunk?"

"I don't know if _drunk_ is the right word." Sirius responded.

Professor McGonagall was not amused.

"Which student's were they?"

Harry silently begged that Sirius wouldn't turn them all in; he would hate to face an angry McGonagall.

"I've already taken care of discipline, Minerva. And I told them all that I would keep identities a secret, so I'm afraid I can't tell you."

Thank you Sirius!

Professor McGonagall wasn't happy, but after another minute she gave up and left.

Harry forgot all about the Pensieve and thanked Sirius for his help before transforming so no one would see him exiting a room he hadn't entered and left before McGonagall could come back.

….

After a few hours Harry forgot all about the incident with McGonagall.

….

A few days later Professor Flitwick came up with an excellent idea that he wanted Harry's help with.

…..

Author's note-

For anyone who wants to see it the necklace that Harry got for Luna came from here:

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	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer- We all know by now that I don't own this. It all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Authors Note- This is a repost. There were a few things pointed out to me in this chapter and the next that I wanted to fix. There are barely any differences, but there are a few minor details that weren't in the fist post.

Chapter 8…

It was a few days after the Halloween Masquerade when Professor Flitwick had a brilliant idea, but for his idea to work he would need the help of Harry Potter.

So, on the Thursday after the Ball Professor Flitwick asked Harry to stay after class.

Harry did and he was more than a little confused by the question that the tiny Professor asked him.

"Do you remember the Dueling Club that Lockhart, the idiot, tried to start three years ago?"

"Yes, sir." Harry answered cautiously; he had no idea where this was going.

"I was thinking of trying to have a new Dueling Club, except this one would actually be useful. I heard from Professor Grey about his first lesson, and I wonder if you'd like to help be in charge of the Dueling Club?"

Harry was not expecting that at all.

"That sounds cool, Professor, but what exactly would that mean?" Harry asked.

"You could help me and the other Professors to teach everyone, and hopefully the students would like the idea of the club not just being run by their boring, old teachers and would be more willing to attend."

"So I'd get to be like a teacher? That actually sounds fun. Would I be allowed to take points off the Slytherins when they bother me?" Harry asked, only half joking.

"No, sadly not." Flitwick chuckled a little.

"Fine. So, when does Dueling Club start and when will it be meeting? And will everyone be learning the same thing, or will it be split into age groups or skill levels?"

"It would start this weekend. We're going to meet twice a week; at 5pm on Sundays and Wednesdays. The current plan is for Professor Grey to teach the First and Second Years, Professor McGonagall and myself to work together with Third and Fourth and for you and another staff member to work together with Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Years."

Harry was a bit honored that the staff seemed to trust him enough to leave the teaching of the three upper years to him, but then a thought hit him. "Who is the staff member I'd be working with?" Harry could only think of one other staff member who'd be interested in a Dueling Club, and the idea was not comforting.

"Professor Snape." Flitwick admitted. Just what Harry was afraid of. Seeing Harry's mutinous expression Flitwick hurried to explain. "He's the most skilled teacher when it comes to dealing with Defense, or probably even offense. But think of the bright side, you would get to demonstrate duels or even new spells with him. You would have plenty of opportunity to hex your most despised Professor! Just don't tell anyone I told you that."

Harry thought about it and decided that it might be worth dealing with the greasy git if he got to hit him with a few choice spells without being able to be punished for it. "I'll still do it, Professor."

"Thanks."

…

Right now Harry was in the Library trying to decide what exactly he could teach on the first day of Dueling Club on Sunday. It was now 4 pm Thursday afternoon; it was only a few hours after Professor Flitwick had approached him with the idea.

The only idea that he had so far was first demonstrating a duel and then picking it apart so that the other students would be able to know exactly what they had done in the duel. He decided that that would probably have to work for the first meeting.

He then decided to just browse through the library shelves one last time before back going to the tower. Harry then found a book that he thought might be interesting: Elemental Magic: Learning to control certain elements.

Harry skimmed through the book and it all looked really useful. He could learn to control Earth, Fire, Air, and Water.

Harry thought that this would be an extremely useful thing to know and did what he always does: he came up with a plan.

It was fairly simple and would allow Harry to learn this new branch of magic as soon as possible. He could train in the trunk for the next few days and, hopefully, by the time he came out he would be able to control the elements. Harry quickly did the math to figure out how long he would have before he needed to be at Dueling Club. If he left now to go start training he would have exactly three days in the trunk. Since every day in the normal world was two months in trunk time he would have six months to become awesome at controlling the elements. No one would really notice if he skipped tomorrow's classes, he skips so often that people just stopped questioning it already.

So, that's what he did.

….

Over the next 6 months Harry became one with the elements. He spent a month and a half on each element (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth) and was soon manipulating them very efficiently.

During his training Harry had spent a lot of time studying each element. He had to learn all he could about the element before he could learn to really control it.

Part of this was learning to acknowledge the danger that each element held.

Water could easily injure someone who wasn't careful; they could be drowned, or their home could be flooded, or they could be swept away in the raging rapids of a river.

Fire's dangers were just plain obvious.

Air without it people wouldn't be able to live.

Earth could cause mass destruction. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and even some of the dangerous animals that roamed earth were dangerous parts of the Earth.

Another part of the training was learning to acknowledge some of the good qualities about the elements.

Water kept people hydrated. Water is key in growing crops of vegetables and fruit that people eat. Water covers most of the earth.

Fire could be used to heat someone up if they are cold. Fire can be used to cook. Fire gives off light that helps us see.

Air keeps everyone alive and breathing.

Earth was where everyone lived. It supports billions of lives.

Even though they were not elements, there were a few more things that Harry learned to control while he trained. He learned to control ice, wind and lightning. Ice was Harry's favorite of anything he learned to control, it could really do almost anything.

Once you were more familiar with what each element could do that was when you could learn to manipulate it. Like Intent Magic there were no specific spells for Elemental Magic. It was more about visualizing what you wanted and using the force of your willpower to make it happen. The more you practiced with controlling an element the easier it became to do so.

Once Harry became really good at controlling and manipulating the elements he worked on learning to conjure them and control them at the same time. Like, say he wanted to conjure an icicle. The only spell that normal people could use to conjure ice only froze whatever you were pointing your wand at. With Elemental magic he could just make the icicle appear in his hand. The same basic idea went for the other elements as well.

Next came changing some of the properties of the elements. Changing things like their temperature and solidity and color. Take fire, for example. It's hot and, if you don't mind being burned, you can just walk right through it (it's not solid). Say that for some odd reason you wanted to make a chair of flames, no one is quite sure why anyone would want to, but if you had some reason to, you could do it by changing some properties of the fire and then manipulating the fire into forming the shape of the chair. If you change the temperature and solidity of your fire chair you could make it perfectly solid enough to sit on and cool enough to the touch to sit on without burning yourself.

Or if for some reason you wanted purple water. You could just conjure a handful and change the color.

Or, and this one could actually be useful, say you wanted to create an invisible barrier. What's more invisible than air? You could just change the solidity of the air from something that's not solid in the slightest to something as solid as a brick wall. It would make a great barrier that no one would be able to avoid running into because they wouldn't be able to see it. Or if you wanted to appear to be walking in midair you could make the air around where you wanted to step solid and just step onto it.

By the end of his six trunk months Harry was happy with how much he had learned and was perfectly fine with using Elemental Magic.

He had also come up with a new plan for his Dueling Club lessons.

.

Coming out of the trunk Harry found that he had 45 minutes to get to the grounds outside the Entrance Hall, where Dueling Club was to meet.

He took his time getting ready to go. He dressed in clothes similar to what he would wear to exercise every morning except it had a sweatshirt as it was getting chilly outside nowadays.

He made it down to the grounds with 10 minutes to spare and decided that it was as good a time as any to start putting his lesson plan into action. And an important part of that was getting the cooperation of his teaching partner.

Harry went and found Professor Snape and quickly said to him "I know we hate each other, but we're stuck working together. I had the idea that we could alternate who leads the group each meeting. I could lead on Sundays and you could lead on Wednesdays. And before you say anything about my idea, think about this: If you'll cooperate with me on Sundays then I'll cooperate with you on Wednesdays. And to give you reason to work with me peacefully I promise that if you'll just let me lead on Sundays I'll turn your hair back to normal."

Harry said all this very quickly so that Snape wouldn't have a chance to interrupt. When he was finished he could tell that Snape wanted to both agree and tell Harry 'No way in Hell' at the same time. Eventually the former won and he agreed to the terms of Harry's truce.

"I suppose you do have a plan for you first meeting, don't you Potter?"

"I always have a plan." Harry said. He wasn't going to reveal the plan until it was already going.

Just then Professor Flitwick called for the attention of the large group of people who had shown up for Dueling Club. It looked like about 2/3 of the school had shown up.

He basically told them that Dueling club would meet twice a week and that it was divided into age groups. He sent the First and Second Years to Sirius who led them to the Lake where they would be practicing, told Third and Fourth Years to stay where they were just outside the Entrance Hall, and sent the upper years to Harry and Professor Snape. Harry led everyone over to the Quidditch Pitch where he wanted to teach them.

He then explained that the meetings would alternate between being led by him and Professor Snape. He also told them a few things that he personally thought were important to dueling.

"You've got to be able to move quickly and easily. That's why I'm not wearing robes anymore; I don't think I can move quickly enough in them. I suggest that if you've got clothes that you can run and move quickly in that you wear them. Running shoes would also be smart.

"Another thing about Dueling is that there's a whole lot of physical work involved in it as well as magical. So just to get you all warmed up and ready to move we're going to run for a bit! Come along, we're going to run two laps around the pitch." Seeing the faces of most students Harry added "If you don't want to do this then leave, because it's part of what I'm teaching. It's not so hard, people; I do all this for about an hour every morning at dawn, so it really isn't very bad and you can all run two laps around the field."

Hearing that, everyone seemed to realize that Harry was actually serious and started running.

In Harry's opinion most of them were terribly pathetic; they were winded by half a lap. Their running speed was barely Harry's jogging speed. He shook his head and called to them "This is sad everybody. I bet I can run three laps around you all and meet you back in the group before you finish another lap."

Looking back at the group Harry could see that they weren't going to believe that until they saw it. So, he took off in a sprint around the field.

About two and a half minutes later he rejoined the group. They still had about half a lap to go. Harry won his bet.

Once everyone had finished their laps Harry was disappointed. "You all have got to build up some endurance!" He said to all the worn out people. Harry was not even tired. "What if you end up in a really long duel? You'll be too exhausted to fight!"

The rest of the lesson was more interesting to the students.

Harry got Professor Snape to help him demonstrate a duel. At first it seemed like Snape was going easy on Harry until he realized that he didn't need to.

Harry had to admit that it was fun to duel with someone other than Sirius for once. He actually enjoyed the challenge of not knowing anything about Snape's dueling style.

To the absolute shock of most people present it was a fairly evenly matched duel.

There were some interesting parts of the duel.

At different points in the duel both of them managed to disarm the other and both started fighting with wandless magic. Harry wasn't using either Intent or Elemental Magic, yet, but he was using his martial arts skills to avoid Snape's spells.

The second most spectacular point was when Harry found out that Snape must also have some skill in Elemental Magic. He learned this when Snape managed to surround him with a cage of ice. The cage was basically four walls of ice on either side of Harry that formed a little room. Most people wouldn't have been able to get out of it. Harry wasn't most people. This was when Harry started using his Elemental Magic.

He just changed the solidity of the ice and walked right through the walls. He very nearly laughed at the expressions on everyone's faces.

That was when he started using his Intent Magic.

The end of the duel came when Harry used the same trick he used on Sirius that first day in class. He used Intent Magic to send a very powerful gust of wind that knocked Snape over then Harry stupefied him. He then walked calmly toward Snape and upon arriving at Snape's motionless form Harry made a quick twirling gesture with his hand and conjured an ice sword. He set the tip of the sword near Snape's chest and then woke him up. "I win." He said.

Snape really had no choice to agree.

"That was fun."Harry added.

Then Snape and Harry picked apart all the details of the duel and explained them to the students who were watching in awe.

The spectacular duel had lasted about 35 minutes.

Every question about either Ice or the way Harry had knocked the Professor over was ignored. Neither Snape nor Harry was going to tell everyone there about Elemental or Intent Magic when they were still incapable of basic Defense.

Then Harry and Snape set people into pairs and had them try dueling so that they could see what everyone knew. All the pairs were dueling at once and Harry and Snape were roaming through the Pairs and observing.

Once they knew exactly what needed to be taught they started teaching basic spells. They figured out who could do what and separated them into groups. The ones couldn't already perform a basic Expelliarmus and got started learning that. The ones that could already do Expelliarmus worked on Protego. The ones that could already do that learned Stupefy. The one *Hermione* who could already do a perfect Stupefy started learning the spell to tie people up.

Harry and Snape wandered from group to group helping anyone who needed it.

This lasted until about 7:45 when Dueling Club ended.

Just before leaving Harry stopped and thanked Snape for actually letting Harry lead the meeting that day without, too much, complaint or comment. Harry even did as promised and fixed Snape's Gryffindor hair. Harry was terribly sad to see it go; it had been a masterpiece.

.

From then on there was a sort of a truce between Harry and Snape.

It seemed that having his butt kicked by Harry made Snape more willing to be in Harry's presence.

Dueling Club was a great success and Harry was enjoying it greatly. Snape had followed Harry's example with the way Harry ran the meetings and pretty soon they had a routine for the meetings. Warm up with a run around the pitch, Harry and Snape duel, students duel so that the teachers can see what they've learned, and practice new skills.

The twice weekly duels between Harry and Snape were always something worth seeing. Neither of them ever seemed to run out of tricks and always seemed to have something new up their sleeves. You never knew who would win until it was over. They each won about half of the time.

One day in late November Harry was bored during a Potions lesson, because he still wasn't going to the classes, and decided to see exactly how strong the truce was.

The next time he had a Potions lesson Harry actually went to Potions class. Snape had looked at him very disapprovingly, but didn't say anything about him being in the room.

Harry had been the only one in the class that day to properly brew the potion, and that was with missing over three months of lessons. Snape didn't look so disapproving of his presence after that.

After that Harry still didn't regularly attend, but he went to Potions class when he felt like it.

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching, Dumbledore approved of a Hogsmeade weekend the first weekend in December for Christmas shopping.

Harry and all of his friends got up early and went out to Hogsmeade.

Of course, Harry had a slightly different plan for himself. There were a few things that he wanted to give his friends that he couldn't exactly get in Hogsmeade, so once in the village he found a deserted alleyway and apparated to Diagon Alley. He also had something that he wanted done for himself while he was gone.

He had actually worn robes and a hooded cloak today to stop people from recognizing him. He was fairly sure that he wasn't supposed to leave Hogsmeade.

After apparating to Diagon Alley he went to Gringotts. Once there he asked to speak to the manager of his account. Apparently that goblin happened to be Griphook.

Harry wanted to know if the Potter family had any properties; he didn't exactly want to live at the Leaky Cauldron for the rest of his life.

He found out that he had two properties: the destroyed house in Godric's Hollow and a very large piece of land that had yet to be built upon.

Harry then went to do Christmas shopping.

When he was done in Diagon Alley he knew his friends would be happy with their presents. But he still had one last thing he wanted to buy in Hogsmeade.

After making his final purchase Harry went to find his friends at the Three Broomsticks for lunch. Everyone wanted to know where he had been, but he wasn't telling.

.

The next day Harry wrote to a magical architect and building company to find out about building a place to live on his property. He included what all he wanted built in the letter and asked if they wouldn't mind making an estimate for him.

The next day the architect got back to him and told Harry what it would cost and how long it would take to. Harry was shocked at how quickly a house could be built with magic.

Harry was impressed with the estimate, it was less than he had been expecting for everything he wanted done, so after receiving it from the architect he replied back that that would be great and asked for them to start designing it and send him the finished blueprints.

About a week later, two days before the holidays started, he received the blueprints.

He showed them to Sirius and asked for his opinion. They were both impressed with the designs and couldn't really think of anything to change.

He wrote back and gave them the coordinates of his land and asked them to start building as soon as was possible.

They wrote back telling him it would be finished by December 20th.

.

This year Harry did not sign up to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas Break. He was going to stay at the Leaky Cauldron until the twentieth; then he would be going to his brand new home.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer- I don't own it. Everything belongs to J.

Author's Note- I fixed a few more details in this chapter too. So it's another repost. I also have something important to say! I decided that the original title of the story-Flight of the Phoenix- doesn't really work with the way the story is going. I'm re-naming it and from now on it's _**Flight of the Falcon.**_

Chapter 9….

This year was the first time Harry was not going to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas break. The other years Harry had nowhere to go, but this year he was going to be able to stay at his very own home.

He was terribly excited on the way to London. His friends were mostly going to be spending Christmas with their families. Most were going to their own homes, but the Weasleys and Hermione were going to spend Christmas at Sirius' house, Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

When they got on the train everyone wanted to sit together, but there really wasn't enough room, so Harry enlarged the inside of one compartment until it was plenty large enough for everyone.

Most of Gryffindor's Quidditch team, Harry, Luna, Ron, Lavender, Hermione, Terry Boot, Neville, Ginny, Susan Bones and Michael Corner all sat together in Harry's enlarged compartment.

A few hours before they got to London, Professor Grey even showed up to sit with them. Everyone was pretty used to hanging out with him because everyone knew that he was Harry's friend after he tutored Harry all summer.

When they were about an hour away from Kings Cross everyone put on their muggle clothes so that they would blend in while in London.

When Harry reached into his trunk to pull out his clothes he also grabbed his shrunken motorcycle which he put on the seat while getting his clothes out of the trunk. He then put his trunk back on the luggage rack and went to go change his clothes.

When he came back Terry asked him about the bike. "Harry, why've you got a toy motorcycle?"

"It's how I'm getting home."

"But you can't ride that little thing."

"It's either that or I apparate." Harry said.

Hermione joined the conversation then. "But Harry you can't apparate either. You aren't old enough to have learned it."

"If you say so, Hermione." Harry really didn't feel like arguing with her.

You could tell when Hermione realized that he actually could apparate and realized how he had learned.

"Professor Grey!" She called while turning an accusing glare at Sirius. "You didn't teach him to apparate did you?"

"I might've." Sirius replied.

"But that's illegal!"

"No it wasn't, there's a loophole in every law."

Hermione looked murderous, if there's one thing she loved then it was rules. She probably couldn't stand the idea of Harry going around a law like that.

"Hermione, it doesn't matter. I'm riding the bike home, not apparating; don't worry about it." Harry said to her.

"But no one can ride that bike, it looks like a toy!"

Harry rolled his eyes at her stubbornness and said "Watch out, then." He then enlarged the bike to its real size and everyone in the room felt stupid for not realizing it had been shrunk. "See now?" he asked.

They all nodded.

"Good." He shrunk it again and put it in his pocket.

A few minutes later they arrived.

Harry said hello to the Weasleys and quietly asked Sirius what his plans for the holiday were before leaving.

"I'll probably stay at Grimmauld Place for this holiday. Why?"

"Oh. I was going to invite you to stay at my new house once it's finished."

"Oh. That sounds much more fun than being at my awful house!"

"Great, do you want to meet me there on the twentieth?"

"Sure."

"Okay, the Floo address is Falcon's Cove."

"Why?"

"It's on the shore, and you know why for the Falcon part."

….

Today is finally Moving Day!

It's the twentieth of December and Harry's about to go meet Sirius at his new house. Harry had also had the idea that he would throw a New Years' Party at his new house for all his friends. Most of the people Harry knew at Hogwarts had been invited to the party along with a few adults that Harry liked and trusted. Among these adults were Sirius, Remus Lupin, Mad-Eye Moody, all of his teachers (even Snape just to be polite), and the entire Weasley family.

Harry was also throwing a much smaller Christmas get-together for his closer friends. All the people he sat with on the train along with Professor Grey, Lupin, and Oliver Wood were invited to this one. Harry wasn't really close with Oliver, but since he had gotten Oliver an incredible broom for Christmas he wanted to see his face when he received it.

The invitations to the parties were fairly simple. They just said that Harry Potter was throwing a Christmas get-together (or New Years Party) and gave the location (Falcon's Cove, France) and invited them to come.

When Harry got to his new house, using Floo, the first thing he did was find the exit. He wanted to see the outside before checking out the inside.

It was perfectly what Harry had hoped for. It was like a slightly smaller version of his first real home: Hogwarts. It was a castle, it was right on the Mediterranean Sea, and it had hundreds of acres of land. Harry was impressed with the outside; that was for sure. Now it was time to check out the inside. He walked around and was ecstatic at how awesome it was.

The inside was not like Hogwarts at all. Instead of stone floors it had dark, mahogany wood floors in most rooms.

There were a total of 25 bedrooms (it was a big castle and Harry has lots of friends) spread throughout the castle.

There was the Master Suite, it was absolutely huge! It was also in a tower. In the center of the bedroom there was a large king size four poster bed. It was mahogany, exactly like the floors, and had nice gold colored bedding. The bedroom also had a wall that was entirely a window facing the sea. It had a black leather couch in front of a fireplace in the bedroom. There was also a massive walk-in closet. The walls of the entire suite were mostly the same shade of gold as the bedding. The suite had a sitting room with a huge, black, suede sectional couch in front of a fireplace. There were also bookshelves and game tables. The bathroom was massive and everything in it was white marble.

There were nine guest suites. They were just smaller versions of Harry's suite and they didn't get the same amazing view. They were all decorated with different colors of walls and matching bedding, a couch and fireplace and a slightly large walk-in closet in the bedrooms. In each sitting room there was either a couch or a few comfortable chairs in front of a fire and a bookshelf. The sitting room walls were all the same color as their connecting bedroom. Each suite had a bathroom of white marble, they weren't as massive as Harry's but they were nice.

There were 15 other guest rooms. They were all pretty boring; they all had the bed and couch and fireplace. The closets in them weren't walk-in. they were just plain closets. And they all had plain bathrooms, but they were still white marble. The walls in the bedrooms all matched the color of the bedding.

No two rooms had the same color scheme.

There were lots of different rooms serving different purposes. There were 7 different Studies. There was a truly massive Library; it was at least twice the size of the one at Hogwarts. There were about a dozen sitting rooms, other than the ones in the suites, scattered throughout the castle. There were also 4 different game rooms that all had pool tables, wizard's chess, gobstones and exploding snap.

There was a gym with a dueling area, fighting ring, rock walls, running track, swimming pool, and exercise machines and weights. The rock walls were really cool; one was like a Cliffside and the other was like a muggle rock wall except it worked similar to a vertical treadmill and never ended.

There was an impressive Entrance Hall with a large, winding staircase that led up to the second story.

On the grounds there was a professional size Quidditch Pitch. Harry couldn't wait to try it out.

There was also a forest. This forest was a lot younger than the Forbidden Forest and had a friendly air about it. Harry followed the path for a little while and found a cute little pond about half a mile in. It was really beautiful on the snow-covered grounds.

Sirius had shown up around the time Harry had finished touring Falcon's Cove, so Harry went through the entire tour again.

One thing Harry was really excited about with his house was that he had asked the building company to add secret passages throughout the castle and he couldn't wait to start finding them.

.

Over the next couple days Harry and Sirius decorated and explored the castle. They wrapped their gifts and put them under a tree that they had set up and decorated in the main sitting room.

Harry had an idea on the twenty second and he hired a house elf. Hired, not enslaved. He paid Rosie three galleons a week and she got Tuesdays off, not to mention that she wouldn't have much work most of the school year.

They practiced a few Quidditch moves on their Firebolts; Sirius had bought one for himself upon buying Harry's.

They basically just enjoyed themselves for the four days before Christmas and Harry's party.

..

On Christmas morning Harry and Sirius opened the presents they had received from their friends right after waking up.

Harry got a selection of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes products from the twins, a book about dragons from Hermione, a box of chocolate frogs and every flavor beans from Ron, Quidditch gloves from Sirius, a scarf from Ginny, and other things like that from his other friends.

Sirius was apparently a really popular teacher because 'Professor Grey' received a lot of gifts from students. Most of them were things like candy. He had also gotten gifts from a lot of Order members. Harry was making him wait for later to get his gift with all the rest of his friends. Harry had told everyone that he would be giving them their gifts at his house later that day when he would be able to see their reactions.

He was positive most reactions would be priceless.

That morning Rosie made French toast for breakfast for them.

At Noon Harry's friends started showing up. Everyone was there by 12:20. He gave the grand tour to everyone, ending with the Quidditch Pitch. As expected, he could barely drag the Quidditch enthusiast away. He had to tell them that they could play later after they opened their presents from him and he told them that he had plenty of brooms for them to use.

His presents to everyone got very good reactions and he was happy he had waited until he could see their faces.

Anyone who was on a Quidditch team got a new broom from him, but these were no ordinary brooms. They were made by Harry himself. He had used his element skills to make some really cool, and very fast, brooms from fire for them. The brooms were perfectly cool to the touch and instead of being the regular orange color of fire were a fun shade of purple. Harry had used Elemental Magic to make them solid and safe to ride.

Sirius received a broom, too, except his was made of ice that would never melt and wasn't cold. It was very fast. Harry had gotten him a second gift as well. It was a motorcycle like Harry's except it was a white bike with a picture of 'Padfoot' on the side.

Harry gave Hermione a 200 galleon gift certificate for Flourish and Blotts.

Harry gave Neville a rare plant, because Neville was great at Herbology.

Luna received a charm bracelet with a charm that Harry had gotten made that looked exactly like him in his Gyrfalcon form. Luna was the only person other than Sirius who understood the significance of the bird; he had told her about his animagus when she asked about his tattoo.

For Lupin Harry had gotten a trunk full of new robes. Lupin could always use new clothes, he often looked shabby.

A few people, like Sirius, got multiple presents. Fred and George were the ones with the coolest extra presents.

Harry had sent everyone who wanted to play Quidditch out to the pitch, he was lending extra brooms that he had to the people who hadn't received brooms as presents, but when the Twins went to go with everyone else he stopped them.

"You guys can go out in a second; I've got something to tell you."

Once everyone else was out of the room he gave them their extra presents: Two properties: one in Diagon Alley and one in Hogsmeade that he bought for them to use as their joke shops.

He told them that they probably shouldn't tell everyone where they had gotten the properties as he didn't want Mrs. Weasley to injure him for helping her sons with a career she didn't approve of.

The twins were ecstatic with the present. They were still jumping for joy when they made it out to the Quidditch pitch.

They all played a spectacular game of Quidditch, the teams were: Harry as seeker with Sirius and George as beaters, Hannah, Luna and Katie as chasers and Oliver as Keeper versus Ginny as seeker, Terry Boot and Fred as beaters, Angelina, Lupin and Michael as chasers, and Ron as Keeper.

The only people playing who weren't currently on a house team were Luna, Sirius, Oliver, and Lupin. Of those the only ones to never have been on a team were Luna and Lupin. Oliver was on a professional team.

The new brooms were incredible. Harry was positive that Gryffindor would be kicking butt in the house tournament with them, even if a few members of opposing houses (Hannah, Michael, and Terry) were using the same brooms. All of Gryffindor would be on them so they would be the best by far.

Harry's team was far better than the other one. He had Oliver who (though he would never tell Ron) Harry knew was a better keeper, he had the terrifying mix of Sirius and George and Harry was a more experienced seeker than Ginny, who usually played chaser.

The game lasted about 2 hours and Harry's team won in a landslide 360-50.

After Quidditch, an exhausted group went inside to find a delicious meal prepared by Rosie. They ate a great Christmas meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, and some other great foods. For dessert Rosie had made an amazing Custard Tart.

It was great fun and Harry was sad to see it end, but he knew that he would see everyone again on New Year's Eve.

…

Harry spent the next four days un-decorating the castle's Christmas decorations and putting up new decorations for New Years.

On the thirtieth he went to Diagon Alley just for something to do. He saw a lot of people he knew and had a good time talking to people and just looking around at all the stores. He bought a dozen Firebolts in Quality Quidditch Supplies that he could set out for his guests to use at his Quidditch Pitch during the party.

On the morning of the thirty first Harry slept late and had a lazy morning. His guests were invited to come at 7:45, so he had plenty of time to get ready and go over last minute details of the party.

He went down to the kitchen to check that everything was okay with Rosie. She was making a lot of food. There wasn't really going to be a main meal, there was just going to be a lot of food on the dining table that people could eat when they got hungry. There was also going to be plenty of dessert; lots of cookies and cake and pie and pastries and tarts and all that good stuff.

There was also a bar in the dining room. There was going to be almost anything the guests could want to drink: Pumpkin Juice, Butterbeer, Gillywater, and Oak-Matured Mead from the Three Broomsticks, Champagne, and even Firewhiskey. Harry had a charm on the glasses and bottles that would make it impossible for underage people to drink the alcoholic beverages. He wouldn't have bothered with it, but since he had invited teachers and ministry officials he didn't think it would be a good idea for his underage guests to be allowed to get drunk. These charms wouldn't work on Harry himself, but that didn't matter as he wasn't technically a minor anymore.

By the time Harry had double-checked that everything was running smoothly it was 6 pm. He went upstairs to his room to take a long shower and get dressed. He put on nice black pants and a black, silk, button-down dress shirt. He also undid the glamour charm that he had been using to hide his Head of the Potter House signet ring; he had been keeping it hidden while at Hogwarts because he didn't want everyone to know about his new status as an adult after being emancipated, but he decided that tonight would be as good a night as any to let everyone know the truth.

At seven thirty Harry and 'Professor Grey' were in the Entrance Hall waiting for the guests to arrive. They started trickling in just after eight thirty.

Harry played host, showing everyone around and telling them to help themselves to food and drink and telling people about the Quidditch pitch.

Even though it was dark out, the Quidditch Pitch was very popular with most of the guests.

_All_ of Harry's teachers showed up around 8:30. Flitwick quietly told Harry that the reason they weren't there earlier was that they had to track down Snape and force him to come. They wouldn't let him not come; the teachers were all in agreement that Snape needed to get out of the castle more often and they weren't going to waste a perfect opportunity to force him to be civil around people. After all, here at Falcon's Cove he couldn't assign detentions or take away house points.

Harry thought it was terribly funny.

It was even funnier when fifteen minutes later he saw Snape and McGonagall arguing by the fireplace where it looked like she had just caught him trying to leave. About thirty seconds after Harry started listening Snape gave up on the argument, stunned McGonagall, and left.

Harry went over to revive his Transfiguration Professor. When she got up it was to find a hysterically laughing Harry. "Sorry about him, he really hates being social." She said to Harry before joining in his laughter.

"I think everyone already knew that, Professor." He replied.

"Too true." She said. Then she added "Potter, what exactly is this place?"

"My new house." He said simply.

"How did you buy a house, Potter, you aren't even of age yet."

He raised his hand and, under the pretence of sweeping his bangs out of his eyes, showed off his ring. "I had a very productive summer." He answered, while grinning as she eyed his ring.

"What exactly did you really do this summer?"

"Truthfully? I ran away from my dreadful family, got emancipated, became the richest man in Europe, and got some help from Professor Grey to learn some stuff. Would you like to see the whole of the castle? It's brand new; it hasn't even been finished for two weeks yet."

He showed his favorite Professor his new house and then the grounds. To say she was impressed would have been a severe understatement. "Someday I want to know the details of whatever happened to you." She told him.

Harry spent the rest of the party talking to a bunch of different people, playing more Quidditch and enjoying himself. He especially enjoyed watching some of the underage people trying to pour themselves a Firewhiskey at the bar only to not be able to move the bottle.

Whenever he noticed that happening he amused himself by walking up to the bar while they were still struggling, pouring himself a glass of Firewhiskey, watching them struggle some more after seeing that it was actually possible to move the bottle, and then eventually seeing realization in their face when they figured out that they wouldn't be drinking any Firewhiskey tonight.

The only downside to Harry walking around with a glass of Firewhiskey all night was that any adult who noticed did not approve and he had to explain about a dozen times why it was perfectly legal for him to be drinking; he was emancipated and considered a legal adult.

A few minutes before midnight Harry decided 'to hell with the rule about alcohol'; and with a wave of his hand in the direction of the bar, he sent a flute of champagne to all fifty or so guests, even the underage ones.

Just before midnight Harry made a short toast wishing everyone 'A great New Year, plenty of luck, and many happy escapes from awful relatives.' Even though the last bit confused plenty of people, the people who understood it laughed.

Everyone counted down to Midnight and that was the end of the fun.

….

The next day Harry once again slept late. When he did get up it was well past noon. He went down to see about some lunch and found a bunch of letters thanking him for inviting the people who wrote them to the party.

Harry was glad that everyone had enjoyed themselves.

…..

The last couple days of break passed in a blur. The train went back to Hogwarts on January 4th.It was a Saturday. Everyone was glad to see each other again and they all told Harry how great his parties were.

Harry and his friends all sat together again. They talked about Gryffindor's improved chances at the Quidditch cup, Dueling Club, Weasley's Wizards Wheezes, and whatever else they thought of.

When they got back to school they went to the Gryffindor Quidditch team went to the pitch to try out the new brooms again; they had their first game in three weeks and wanted to be fully accustomed to the new brooms by then.

After a quick practice they went inside for dinner with the rest of the school.

..

As the next day, the fifth of January, was a Sunday Harry got to teach a Dueling Club meeting that day. He had a really good lesson planned out; and he hoped it would be fun, for him at least.

At Five that night Harry went through the routine of running around the Quidditch Pitch, but when it came time for the duel between him and Snape Harry changed the routine a little.

"Today we're going to do something a little different. Today I want to start dueling against multiple opponents. Can I have volunteers for people who'll fight against me instead of Professor Snape today?"

No one volunteered to fight against Harry. Harry asked Snape to pick up to 10 people to duel in his place.

Snape seemed to enjoy picking the nastiest possible people to fight in his stead.

He picked Malfoy, Zabini, Nott, and seven other Slytherins from Sixth and Seventh Years.

Harry was smiling the entire time; he knew that he was about to thoroughly enjoy kicking Slytherin ass.

Harry told them all not to hold back anything but Unforgivables and the duel started.

The noise from the duel and the crowd watching attracted all the other age groups and before it was even half over the entire Dueling Club was watching.

The duel was nearly as spectacular as the duels between Harry and Snape, but for slightly different reasons. When Harry dueled Snape he was facing one person who was on a similar skill level to his own. Now Harry was facing 10 people who were fully capable of some nasty curses, but were nowhere near his skill level.

Harry quickly got rid of Malfoy, who was very good at bragging but not very good when it actually came to showing off. It was ridiculously easy. The first stunning spell he sent got him square in the chest.

After a minute of no one having any success Harry took a leaf out of Snape's book and trapped one particularly gruesome Seventh year in a cage of Ice.

A few minutes later, just after Harry managed to knock out a Sixth year, Blaise Zabini managed to disarm Harry.

Harry wasn't bothered and just kept fighting wandlessly. He sent out his classic gust of powerful wind, knocking over the remaining two Sixth Years and stunning them once they were down.

This was about the time the last of the Dueling Club showed up to watch, but Harry didn't notice them at all. He was enjoying himself far too much; he had only been hit by one thing so far: the Expelliarmus from Zabini. One of the Seventh Years didn't have Harry's focus and broke his concentration to look at the crowd; Harry had him knocked out and tied up in 5 seconds.

Now it was only Harry versus Nott, Zabini, and two Seventh years.

One of the Seventh Years got a bit too close to Harry and Harry used a muggle fighting technique on him: the roundhouse kick. He got hit right in the gut. Once he was down Harry quickly tied him up.

Two minutes later Harry managed to use his wind again to knock over both Blaise and Theodore Nott. He trapped them in ice cages.

Turning to the remaining Seventh Year Harry focused on the last remaining opponent. As he fired a perfectly aimed stunner right at the Slytherin, the Slytherin managed to get off one more curse. Harry got hit in the chest by a particularly nasty cutting curse, Sectumsempra.

Harry had seen this curse before and knew exactly how to treat it. He was also told by Sirius who had invented it back in the Marauders' school days and he totally blamed them for all the pain he was in right now.

Harry had started with the counter-curse almost before he was even hit, he had seen it coming and heard the Slytherin shout the spell, but he couldn't get out of the way quickly enough. While he worked on repeating the counter curse over and over again to deal with his injuries he turned to glare at the maker of the nasty curse. The glare plainly said 'This is all your fault'.

A few seconds later Harry was all healed and looked up from his glaring to face the rest of the crowd. "I'm fine." He said in a weak voice. He then realized what a mess his black t-shirt was and mumbled to himself "Urgh! I'll have to get rid of this shirt."

He took it off and Incendio'd it just to take off some of the edge off of his anger at getting hit by the stupid curse.

He started to walk back to the castle when he heard a voice calling "Potter, don't you think you should go to the-"

"-Hospital Wing. I know, Professor." He interrupted and called back to Professor McGonagall.

As Harry entered the castle he entirely missed the confused look that was being shot at him by one of the people in the crowd.


	10. Authors note

Authors note- hey everyone, sorry about the wait, but I have been on a terribly long vacation and I didn't bother bringing my computer with me and I haven't had a chance to really write. I'm also trying to write two other stories that will be posted soon that I've got more passion for. As it is, I'm currently writing this note from my iPod,so, It might take a while for a new chapter. Sorry again. Oh and to all the wonderful readers who've asked about Luna, I have problems writing relationships having never been in one myself. I'm only 14 and have led a sheltered and pathetic life, therefore I have difficulties when it comes to inserting Luna into the story. Believe me, I'm working on the next chapter, but it could be a while longer because I start school in two days! Until next time, and thanks for reading, 21ShootingStars 


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